Alfitude

You’ve gone from teaching yourself keyboard in Tripoli and being a refugee in Malta to meeting Max Martin in Sweden. What is the single most important lesson those shifts taught you about resilience?

I’d say the single most important lesson I’ve learnt facing all those shifts is to believe in myself and my ability to come out on the other side no matter where life takes me.

I don’t think people realize the power you have when you believe that you deserve to do great things in life. From becoming a refugee, to losing 264 pounds, to building my music career by myself – the one constant was me believing that I could do it, showing up for myself, and putting in the work.

You’ve pioneered ‘A-POP’ to bridge the Middle East and the West; how do you balance staying true to your Arabic soul while aiming for a global pop sound?

What’s really cool about A-POP is that it’s a manifestation of that balance process. I grew up listening to ‘ABBA Gold’, Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ (thanks to my mom), whilst also listening to Arabic hits on the radio. So, when I began writing music, this fusion of musical elements is what naturally came to me. My love for global pop music never came from a strategic place of ‘I want to succeed in music, so I’ll make pop’. I think as artists our main job is to protect the curious inner-child in us, so I always just try to stay true to that excitement and see where it takes me, without holding on too rigidly to definitions.

‘Mama, I’m on TV’ tackles the backlash you faced for being too vulnerable with your work. Why was it vital for you to confront cancel culture through music rather than staying silent?

As someone who writes songs to process their feelings, I honestly can’t see a scenario where I wouldn’t have felt the need to say something about this. I felt it was important to document this for the future generations of artists. Being an artist is almost like being a fictional character, where people feel like they can build you up and tear you down based on how they feel momentarily, and then just move on with their lives onto the next thing. For us artists, it feels like it’s the end of everything, and it often starts a downward spiral that’s difficult to get out of creatively and mentally. So, I feel that it’s important for artists to know that, unfortunately, it’s a part of the job, and you should never let it stop you from moving forward and making the art you wanna make. It was equally important to show the audience that it’s not just fun and games for us on the other side, like it is for them. Words stick, and words have magnitude.

Your new project, ‘A-POP’, features an acoustic reimagining of ‘Hometown Smile’. How does it feel to revisit the song that started it all now that you’ve reached over 150 million streams?

It was amazing to work on the acoustic version because that’s actually the original form of the song! I wrote it in 15 minutes on my guitar back in 2017 and I never would have expected it to become a part of millions of people’s lives. I also sing the song in this same style on all my livestreams on social media. So, it felt like a full-circle moment to finally capture it in a recorded format – after many requests from my fans, the bahjatroops, to release an acoustic version. I worked on it with my co-producer Howard Keith Debono, who’s also my main collaborator for my upcoming debut album. We had a lot of fun putting it together. Fun fact: it’s actually me playing guitar on the acoustic version! That was cool to do.

As a TikTok Music Creator of the Year and a leading independent artist, what is the ultimate boundary you hope to break next for Arab creators on the world stage?

For me, A-POP is more than my ‘global Pop with an Arabic soul’ musical style, it’s a manifestation of what I call the ‘awkward middle,’ the space where I constantly find myself. Throughout my life, I’ve never fit in no matter how hard I tried. I grew up on the internet and wasn’t ‘Arab enough’ as a kid, but too Arab to blend in when I moved abroad. I was too fat compared to other kids, but after losing 264 pounds, my loose skin made me ‘too weird’ to be considered normal. I was ‘too feminine’ to hang out with the boys, yet a boy who shouldn’t hang out with the girls. My music was ‘too English’ to be considered part of Arab Pop, but ‘too Arabic’ to be global pop. A-POP is my declaration that this ‘awkward middle’ not only exists, but it deserves to exist. It’s for anyone who feels pressured to dilute themselves to be accepted.

The boundary I hope to break for Arab creators on the world stage is the pressure to conform – to show the world that authenticity, complexity, and hybridity are strengths, not limitations.