Album lore

Jdeed, Vol. 1, issued by Cairo’s BLTNM in January 2019, gathers five tracks from Al Nather and Shabjdeed, two figures central to Egypt’s underground hip hop scene. Their collaboration channels the city’s street vernacular into sparse, gritty beats and clipped flows, laying bare the urgency and grit of contemporary urban life. The featured track “Bansak” stands as a prime example: lean percussion and raw vocal delivery converge with a rough-hewn immediacy.This release embodies a moment in Arabic hip hop where local dialect and DIY production coalesce into a distinct signal within the broader genre. Its modest footprint on Last.fm—over 66,000 scrobbles—belies a resonant presence among crate-diggers attuned to the region’s emergent voices. Jdeed, Vol. 1 remains a concise document of a specific scene’s pulse at the decade’s end.

Album lore

Jdeed, Vol. 1, issued by Cairo’s BLTNM in January 2019, gathers five tracks from Al Nather and Shabjdeed, two figures central to Egypt’s underground hip hop scene. Their collaboration channels the city’s street vernacular into sparse, gritty beats and clipped flows, laying bare the urgency and grit of contemporary urban life. The featured track “Bansak” stands as a prime example: lean percussion and raw vocal delivery converge with a rough-hewn immediacy.This release embodies a moment in Arabic hip hop where local dialect and DIY production coalesce into a distinct signal within the broader genre. Its modest footprint on Last.fm—over 66,000 scrobbles—belies a resonant presence among crate-diggers attuned to the region’s emergent voices. Jdeed, Vol. 1 remains a concise document of a specific scene’s pulse at the decade’s end.