Rapper Marwan Moussa is seizing his moment
After a turbulent few years, the Egyptian MC and producer gears up for a European tour and the release of a poignant new album
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Lately, Marwan Moussa’s feet have barely hit the ground. In the past few weeks, the Egyptian rapper and producer has performed at festivals in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and joined the Palestinian-Chilean singer Elyanna on stage for a duet at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London. Speaking over WhatsApp, he is travelling down a Cairo highway, recovering from a cold he suspects he caught on his travels.
Preparing for a UK and Europe tour that starts in a few days and includes a performance at London’s Scala on 19 January, there is little time for recovery — but that’s just life as one of the most globally recognised faces on the burgeoning Arabic-language hip-hop movement.
Born in the north-eastern city of Ismailia to a German mother and Egyptian father and raised in Cairo, Moussa’s breakout moment came alongside the release of his debut album Bel Monasba in late 2017, his intricate rhymes and composed delivery standing out against the more macho lyrical styles favoured by many predecessors.
“I didn’t like the over-aggressiveness — I felt like it was fake,” he says. “I was part of a movement of a generation of rappers who displayed our confidence by being calm on the mic.”
While his vocal work is powerful and distinctive, Moussa, 30, says that he is a beatmaker first and foremost. Blending trap-style syncopations with Arabian percussion and the sound of mahragan – a thoroughly Egyptian genre of electronic music — his productions hit hard.
“I love mahragan because it’s the Egyptian version of hip-hop,” he says. “I feel like everyone who looks into the history of these genres can see the similarity. It’s urban street music.
“What I am trying to do as a producer is give you the whole Arabic identity. I’m trying to give you our drums, our rhythms, our instruments. It’s important to me that our identity finds its way onto the global stage.”
Along with Moussa’s continent-spanning performances, songs including Sheraton, Tesla, and Batal 3alam (World Champion) have racked up tens of millions of YouTube views and listens on streaming platforms. He also picked up three wins at the 2022 All Africa Music Awards: best African rapper, best artist in African hip-hop, and breakout artist of the year.
Despite his success, Moussa is occasionally frustrated by what he sees as the Egyptian rap scene’s failure to carve out a distinct sound of its own.
“I just feel like we just go for what’s fresh in the States or in the UK,” he says. “I’m just coming as a regular person from inside the scene saying, ‘Guys, why does Nigeria have its own complete style and South Africa have amapiano — their own complete and unique style of music — and we don’t?’
“We should be more creative in trying to convert our own culture’s sound to modern, youthful, futuristic music.”
At the end of 2023 Moussa lost his mother after a prolonged illness. He took much of 2024 off, making his upcoming tour — titled The Return — something of a comeback.
It has been years since Moussa toured in mainland Europe and performing for audiences with a significant Egyptian diaspora presence always brings a special energy to his shows.
“The crowds in Egypt, they also go crazy and are high energy, but I would say that the difference is that in the foreign crowd, you feel a homesickness,” he says. “When you start getting homesick, anything from your home country, you hold on to it and it feels more geared to you.”
Moussa is keenly aware that opportunities to play to such audiences are precious and takes to the stage determined to give them everything they want.
“If I’m doing a long performance in Egypt, I can do some lesser-known songs, but when it comes to the diaspora crowd, I go for the hits,” he says. “We might not have the chance to do this again in a couple of months, so I want to give them all of the songs they know.”
Once his time on the road is done, Moussa’s sights are set on a new and deeply personal album.
“I wouldn’t say it is conceptual, as much as it is an emotional journey through the five stages of grief,” he says of the forthcoming release. “If someone is going through something similar, and they listen to the five stages of songs, they can get closer to their own emotions or what that they’re going through.”
The album will expand on themes tackled on his August 2024 EP The Stage of Denial and comes at a time of growing professional and creative ambition.
“I’m still in the same home studio, I’m still in my same house, I’m still in my same everything that I started with,” he says. “But in recent months, I’ve started to have this idea of expansion – it kind of felt like, ‘OK, things are getting serious now.’”
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