Un secuestro exprés, y luego atado en un ascensor
Pregunta por España si existe alguno que sea mejor
Toda la noche – Jul ft. Morad
I started listening to Morad in 2019 when I lived in Barcelona. At the time, I lived in the La Bordeta neighbourhood, near the Mercat Nou metro station. A few metres further, crossing the Rambla del Badal, Barcelona ends and you are in the dormitory town of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat. In the heart of L'Hospitalet is the neighbourhood of La Florida, where Morad was born and raised.
When I first heard "Cuidadito" or "MDLR" - which stands for 'Mec de la rue' in French and ‘Streetboy’ in English - I was shocked at how French his sound was. Memories of Jul and Marseillaise rap, as well as the Afro-trap of MHD, came to mind. As an avid listener of the French scene for more than a decade, I could not be happier that this sound was finally making its way through the Spanish scene. But the road to get there was not easy.
No country for racialised rap
Música pa’ carretera, y lo hacemos de otra manera
No somos unos cualquiera, somos los de la nueva era
Carretera - Morad
Morad represents a new generation of urban music in Spain. One that we have been missing for many years. It is fair to say that rap emerged as the music of a minority that rebelled against the prevailing order. This was originally the case in the United States, but also in many other countries. Not so in Spain. Of course, Spanish rap emerged from the hands of African migrants and racialised people influenced by exchanges with American soldiers in the US military bases of Torrejón de Ardoz and Zaragoza - which are no longer active - but it was never a renegade music made by minorities. In Spain, rap is predominantly white and Spanish.
That has a lot to do with the history of migration in Spain. In 2013, I wrote my thesis on the rap industry in Spain. The question of the influence of minorities in Spain was raised by Dr. Francisco Reyes Sánchez, whom I had the pleasure of interviewing. Until recently, the Gipsies were the largest minority in Spain. However, they have a very specific and strong cultural and musical tradition, namely flamenco, which makes it difficult for rap to assert itself as a vehicle through which they can express their grievances. Certainly there are cases of gypsy rappers, but these are the exception rather than the norm.
In the 1990s, Spain became a country of immigration and various migrant communities and their descendants became part of Spanish society. However, as mentioned earlier, this late migration did not help rap reach its peak as a musical genre in Spain, while it had become mainstream in the US and increasingly important in France.
In the last seven years, Spain has experienced a boom in urban music with very particular characteristics. Spain's trap artists, including world stars like Rosalía and C. Tangana, have taken Spanish popular music to a new level while retaining many cultural, musical and artistic elements of Spanish culture. Again, the minorities were left out.
In this context, Morad is an exception rather than the norm. Although Moroccans are the largest foreign community in Spain - 775,000 according to official figures, which do not take into account many people with irregular status as well as second-generation migrants and those who have obtained Spanish citizenship - this community's contribution to rap has been very small. Due to the lack of musical Arabic references in the Spanish language, the Arab diaspora in Spain has always looked up to its northern neighbour and found its inspiration and cultural and musical references in French rap.
Nobody is a prophet in one’s own land
T'es qu'un bandeur, rrh tfou gros molard
J'écoute du Rémy, du Ju-Jul, du Morad
Billets violets - Sasso
It is therefore not surprising that Morad's music is echoed in France. His hit "Motorola" - 56 million streams on Spotify and 46 million on Youtube - could easily have been written by a French rapper. His beats, entirely inspired by the sound of Jul and Marseille, and the shared codes and references that speak to life in the blocks with a strong Arab heritage, have appealed to French audiences and French rap artists.
Little known in Spain until a famous TV show interviewed him - his interview with Jordi Évole in ‘Lo de Évole’ earned him a lot of hate among right-wing collectives - Morad has found his way to the forefront of French rap artists. An avowed fan of Jul, he released his first feature, "Vatos Locos", with the Marseillaise rapper in 2020. Since then, heavyweights of French rap like Lacrim, Rim'K, Soolking or Naps, but also emerging talents like Moubarak and Maes have featured him in their singles and albums. For Jul, Morad is a must-listen, with four more singles featuring the Barcelona rapper released in the last two years. His star has risen so high that French rappers mention him in their own lyrics - as the opening quote above shows.
Morad's strength lies in the fact that he has not changed. His lyrics are still about the hard life in Barcelona's poor neighbourhoods, the struggle to make a living and support his family, the difficult balance between good deeds and survival, police abuse, drug use and trafficking, and the impact on the younger generations. Visually, his clips look cheap and simple, always shot on the streets and blocks of La Florida and starring children. Aesthetically, they are the elements found in every French rap clip: Football T-shirts, Lacoste tracksuits, Nike TN shoes, a group of guys sitting in the main square smoking joints, and drifting motorbikes. Still, he managed to get someone like Rim'K to come to La Florida to film the clip for "Papel" - 30 million on Spotify and 28 million on Youtube.
But despite all this success, Morad is not recognised in the Spanish rap scene. As mentioned above, Spanish rap is still predominantly white and Spanish. Only a few other rappers have considered collaborating with Morad, namely Dellafuente and R.V.F.V. - two Andalusian rappers from Granada and Almería respectively, who are very much influenced by Arabic sounds. Much to the chagrin of some, however, Morad hit it big in the summer of 2022 with his single "Pelele" - which, apart from reviving a Spanish word no longer in use, has amassed a whopping 103 million streams on Spotify and 59 million on Youtube - and his feature with Bizarrap on the latter's "Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 47" - also with over 100 million streams on Spotify. As of today, these are the only two songs that any Morad fan can hear in any mainstream nightclub in Spain.
Paving the way
Niño de la calle caminando en solitario y policía que yo veo siempre acompañado,
Esos niños sí que se preocupan por su barrio y no del comisario que está sentado.
Movimientos y problemas se ven a diario, pero bueno, eso aquí se ve normal.
Lo que hice fue porque lo veía necesario y tú lo hiciste porque querías ser viral.
Nuestros modos – Morad ft Delarue
It is fair to say that Morad launched the Arab rap scene in Spain and opened the door for other artists. But that does not mean there were not rappers of Arab origin before. In the 2000s, other rappers like ESM, Khaled from Los Santos, Ferid El Extranjero from the group Delahoja, who released a song with Marseillaise star Soprano, or Al Arabi from the collective Comando Apache were active in the scene, but they were drops in an ocean.
Today, most Arab rappers have found a vehicle in Spain to voice their displeasure in the drill subgenre, even if the Spanish version is far less violent and gritty than its American and British sisters. The reasons for this lie in what we have already commented on above: It is a genre heavily used by rappers of Arab descent; a Marseille-inspired sound, mainly characterised by autotune and reggaeton beats; and the easy access that drill offers to young people without resources - as evidenced by the large number of songs released each year. This has led to a terminology and universe that borrows heavily from France - la zone, les pukavs, MDLR and even specific gestures - although terms from Latin America can also be found.
Morad is the first, but not the only one. Anyone who has heard one of his songs will have paid attention to a name that keeps coming up: Beny. Beny Jr. is Morad's friend and neighbour and an aspiring driller. He came to prominence in the summer of 2022 with the hit song "Flow 2000s" by Bad Gyal, in which he featured. In the same year, he and Morad released the 6-song album EP Capítulo 1, which is probably one of the best drillers' works in Spanish - at least for me. Another Barcelona-based artist who has gained popularity is Khaled El Paisano. His lyrics are much more activist than Morad's and Beny's, constantly denouncing the police, right-wing parties, racism, and the difficulties of migrants in Spain.
Most rappers from the Arab diaspora in Spain are based in Catalonia. This is not surprising, as about 25% of all migrants from North African countries in Spain live in this region. However, there are also rappers of Arab origin in other parts of the country. In Madrid, Delarue is the head of the movement. He comes from the San Blas neighbourhood in the east of Madrid and could be described as the perfect representative of French rap in Spain. In his songs he describes life in his neighbourhood, but he dares to do something different from the rest of the drillers: he raps in French in many of his songs. Last but not least, Aiman JR is one of the youngest Drillers in the scene. He comes from Bilbao in the Basque country and is another representative of the Arabic drill scene, which is constantly growing.
It is impossible to go into all the new talents that appear on the drill scene every day. This article is exclusively about how the socio-political, economic and demographic changes in the country paved the way for the emergence of this Arab drill scene, which in just three years has become one of the most prolific sub-genres of Spain's urban music scene. In future articles, I will discuss how this scene differs from others like trap and how this genre democratises urban music in terms of minority representation, but also of territories.
Now listen to it!
In our upcoming issue…