{"id":4009,"date":"2011-11-28T19:59:15","date_gmt":"2011-11-29T02:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=4009"},"modified":"2011-11-28T19:59:15","modified_gmt":"2011-11-29T02:59:15","slug":"arab-hip-hop-and-rap-artists-get-inspired-by-recent-events","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=4009","title":{"rendered":"Arab hip-hop and rap artists get inspired by recent events"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arab hip-hop and rap artists get inspired by recent events<\/strong>
\nby Janne Louise Anderson – Nov 28, 2011 – The National<\/p>\n

On January 25, 2011, the day of the first major demonstration in Tahrir Square in Cairo, the 28-year-old Syrian-American rapper Omar Offendum, aka Omar A Chakaki, went to his studio in Los Angeles and wrote a verse calling for the overthrow of the former president Hosni Mubarak.<\/p>\n

He called a fellow rapper, the Iraqi-Canadian and Dubai-born Yassin Alsalman – more widely known as The Narcicyst.<\/p>\n

“Yo, Yassin,” he said. “Do you have time to write a verse?”<\/p>\n

The Narcicyst did and recorded it that same day in Montreal. Quickly the stars aligned: The HBO Def Poet Amir Sulaiman sent in a third verse from Atlanta.<\/p>\n

Freeway, an American Muslim MC, sent a verse from Philadelphia. And finally, the Palestinian-Canadian R&B vocalist Ayah did the hook. Everything was produced by Sami Matar, a Palestinian-American composer from California, and within three days #Jan25Egypt hit YouTube:<\/p>\n

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”<\/p>\n

The words are Gandhi’s but the voice is Offendum’s, laid over a backdrop of rows of praying men being dispersed by a water canon. Then, saluting the 26-year-old Tunisian vegetable-seller whose self-immolation prompted the Tunisian revolution, The Narcicyst raps:<\/p>\n

“But first God rest the soul of those who choose to be free, from poverty they rose, knee-deep in robbery, souls will plummet and burn like Mohammed Bouazizi. From Cairo to Baghdad.”<\/p>\n

On the day of the video upload, tweets from Tahrir Square started ticking in, thanking the artists.<\/p>\n

Within a week the track had been viewed more than 100,000 times, mainly in the Middle East. A Libyan, Yemeni and Syrian uprising later, the number has more than doubled. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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Arab hip-hop and rap artists get inspired by recent events by Janne Louise Anderson – Nov 28, 2011 – The National On January 25, 2011, the day of the first major demonstration in Tahrir Square in Cairo, the 28-year-old Syrian-American rapper Omar Offendum, aka Omar A Chakaki, went to his studio in Los Angeles and more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[2098],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4009"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}