female | Arabia Policy | Arabiapolicy.com

In a largely male-dominated industry, the world of rap has opened up considerably in recent years under the impulse of many women who want to make their voices heard — even in the Arab world, where little space has been made for female rappers who are too often held to a different standard than their male counterparts.

After scouring both the mainstream and underground rap scene, here are eight of the best Arab female rappers you need to listen to. Strong, passionate, and politically engaged, these women are challenging social norms and stealing the spotlight.

Shadia Mansour

The British-Palestinian musician is one of the pioneering women of Arab rap. Dubbed “the First Lady of Arab Hip Hop,” Shadia Mansour has been performing from an early age, singing classical music before shifting to rap music.

Her songs are political statements that carry her passion for Palestinian liberation with a rapping style reminiscent of the 80s and 90s.

Malikah

Despite her sparse releases, Lebanon’s rapping queen Malikah has been in the game for over a decade.

Born Lynn Fatouh, she started her journey rapping both in English and French, and then, in 2006, she switched to Arabic after reinventing herself as Malikah, the Arabic word for queen, a title she has kept ever since.

She has collaborated with many central figures of the Arab rap scene and has made her way into the international festival circuit with cross-cultural projects such as Lyrical Rose, her trio with Kenyan artist Nazzi and Columbian rapper Diana Avella.

Meryem Saci

Montreal-based singer and rapper Meryem Saci is considered one of Algeria’s first female rappers.

Her sound is eclectic, mixing together various influences such as jazz and reggae with Middle-Eastern undertones and Gnaoua-style music.

The Algerian rapper never fails to impress with new aspects of her art and defines her style as “Afro-Arab.”

Mona Haydar

Syrian-American rapper Mona Haydar ventured into the music industry in 2017 and found immediate success.

Her first song “Hijabi” totals a whopping 7.2 million views on YouTube.

Far from being a one-hit-wonder, she has since released many songs and has racked up impressive views, making her one the most prolific and female rappers in the Arab world. Her songs speak of feminism, denounce racism, and advocate self-love, tolerance, and world peace.

Asayel Slay

The rapper shot to fame with her debut song, “Bint Mecca” (“Mecca Girl”), a song in which she celebrates women from Mecca, Islam’s holiest city.

Conservatives slammed her song along with the music video, accusing the rapper of undermining the customs and traditions of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. This led to the singer’s arrest, but she was released shortly after.

The controversy only made Asayael Slay’s hit even more popular as people went online to show support and solidarity with the rapper through the hashtag #بنت_مكة_تمثلني. (“Mecca girl represents me”).

Soultana

Soultana is one of the first female rappers in Morocco and the MENA region and has paved the way for a generation of Arab and North African women in the rapping industry.

Well-known for her a passionate rapping style and energetic delivery, Soultana rose to international prominence as part of Moroccan girl group Tigress Flow, before branching out as a solo artist.

Her biggest hit to date, Sawt Nssa, or “Voice of Women,” is a feminist manifesto in which she condemns street harassment and gender-based violence.

Medusa

Boutheina El Alouadi, known as Medusa, is a rapper and dancer who has been immersed in Tunisia’s burgeoning hip-hop scene from the age of 10.

She is also the first woman rapper from Tunisia to break out onto the international scene. Her songs touch on topics ranging from abortion rights and revolution to world peace.

Mayam Mahmoud

She made a name for herself on the popular “Arabs Got Talent” television show, but Mayam Mahmoud is much more than a hijab-wearing rapper: She is a women’s rights activist who made it her mission to combat sexual harassment in Egypt, a mission that got her the 2014 Index Art Award in London.

Just like her advocacy, her songs tackle harassment, sexism, and victim-blaming.

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The Sharjah Art Foundation, in collaboration with Habibi Collective, will host a series of virtual film screenings throughout June. The project will highlight the work of female filmmakers from across the MENA region and consist of a diverse array of short films, features, documentaries, and experimental movies.

Habibi Collective

Started by Roision Tapponi in 2018, Habibi Collective is a digital platform dedicated to archiving and promoting female filmmaking in the MENA. The daughter of an Iraqi father and Irish mother, Tapponi grew up in rural Ireland. She started the project following her realization that the mainstream films she watched lacked representation of Arab women and narratives that surrounded her during summers spent visiting family in Iraq.

Habibi Collective hosts its content on Instagram, making it free and highly accessible. The account currently has over 10,000 followers and prior to the outbreak of coronavirus had hosted film screenings for fans in London. Bringing the online community together in-person creates a space for dialogue and the further diffusion of the female-made films featured on the page, according to Tapponi.

Highlighting the diversity of Arab cultures and experiences

In 2020, the majority of mainstream media representations of Arab characters and culture remain deeply rooted in negative stereotypes that typecast Arabs as one-dimensional, simple figures. Entrenched in orientalist understandings of the MENA region, the men are cruel, weak-minded terrorists and the women either oppressed and voiceless, struggling against restrictive cultural norms, or exotic, muted subjects of the Western male gaze.

These stale representations deprive characters of their humanity and ignore the rich diversity of Arab experiences. By painting the region as a monolithic entity, the unique culture and history of the countries that make up the MENA, and the sub-regions within it, are dismissed.

In addition to ignoring cultural specificity, Arab characters in mainstream media are almost exclusively Muslim, contributing to the false assumption that to be Arab is to be Muslim. The experiences and histories of the region’s many religions, including Judaism and Christianity, deserve to be acknowledged, shared, and celebrated.

History of silencing

Media produced in the West has a long history of silencing or “othering” Arab characters and culture. The Palestinian-American postcolonial scholar Edward Said developed the theory of “Orientalism,” used to describe the process of “othering” the Orient (Asia and the MENA region), in his 1978 book by the same name. According to this theory, 19th century Western literature and art reduced Arabs to uncivilized and idle “others” imbued with a sort of mysticism.

The lure of the “exotic” led many who had never visited the region to create inaccurately imagined representations of “The East.” The lack of genuine interaction or exchange further contributed to constructions of the Orient as a passive subject of Western construction. It is this lack of dynamic exchange and passiveness that this sits at the heart of today’s simplistic misrepresentations of Arabs in mainstream media.

In 2015, artists hired to make scenes on the program “Homeland” “more authentic,” via the addition of Arabic graffiti, deviated from script to include the phrase “Homeland is racist.” That the producers did not notice the change, which only came to light when the show aired, further highlights the problems of the continued portrayal of the MENA region by those who do not understand the cultures and languages of the Middle East.

This flattening of Arab culture and specificity is similarly present in the 2019 Netflix series “The Spy” when the supposedly Syrian shopkeepers speak in Moroccan Darija (the country’s Arabic dialect) and not the Levantine dialect spoken in Syria. The program was filmed in Morocco.

The work of Habibi Collective and its partnership with Sharjah Art Foundation to bring Arab voices, particularly those of women, to a broader audience is an important step in reversing the trend of speaking of, instead of hearing from, Arab characters and creators.

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