Episode 11:  “What’s the Freshest Fruit” featuring Felukah

Felukah: I think I make up a lot of different scenarios, you know, there's so many rappers that have been rapping about the money they don't have and the bitches they don't get. And like, it's kinda the same in my sense where I'm like imagining a future where, like remember that time when we all like chilled after school and there were mad girls at the Cybird, which was like a PlayStation club that girls were never allowed in when I grew up. When I was growing up in Cairo. Like spaces that women were just not in. 

And I'll write from a place of like being at that site, having not been there. I'm trying to make a soundtrack for the women that are now finally allowed in those spaces. Saudi women who are driving. Now, they already have music for it and they only just started being able to drive. So

Meklit: Mm

Felukah: Like, I'll tell my story, I'll write my words, I'll, you know, put this thing together and represent myself the way that I haven't been before. I just need the mic.

HOST INTRO

As a Brooklyn kid in the 90s, the music that we listened to really defined us. Like, someone would ask you what kind of music do you like? But what they were really asking was, who are you as a person? It was a short cut, often with many complex undertones. In sixth grade, my answer to that question was easy rapid fire. In a beat, I’d say, I listen to rap. 

It was the days of De La and Tribe and LL. Hip-hop was everywhere, electric, flows were changing, it was all in process. Decades have passed and we all know how hip-hop has grown and gone global. But even today, New York is still making people fall in love with rap. Today we are speaking to Egyptian emcee Felukah, who became a rapper when moving to New York transformed her poetry into bars. 

Me and Felukah, we talked about music, family, creativity, and building spaces for liberation across her multiple homelands. 

My name is Meklit and this is Movement: music and migration remixed.

Meklit: Tell me about your love of poetry.

Felukah: Poetry is my day one tang. Like, I took an oath to poetry as a craft when I was like 13. Literally the lamest 13 year old you could have found.

Meklit: What was the oath?

Felukah: I promise to write everything that ever happens to me down in this journal. I promise that I will never forget that poetry will always be there for me when my friends won't be. Like I can always write my thoughts out. That is the freest space, pen and paper. 

And I remember feeling so seen in my poetry and my English teacher was the first person. It's like that classic story that everyone has, that one teacher that believed in them and made them feel like, damn, maybe I could get up to something in this life. And she was the one who like would read my poems, that I would write just for fun. And just be like, you promise me you won't stop writing.

TED TALK AUDIO

It was like the era of poets doing Ted Talks, Sarah Kay and Rafiq Ziada, and so many, and I'm like, this is a thing. Like, that's crazy. So those were my greats before I found out about Loren Hillen before I found out about all the MCs who like really took poetry to the next level.

Meklit: So how did you, how did you first fall in love with hip hop was that was hip hop part of your New York story?

Felukah: Mm-hmm, absolutely. Like, I had heard of these artists, like in Cairo growing up and started like kind of listening to them. But when I came out to New York and I actually saw like the places that they performed at and I went to the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which like Princess Nokia was like debuting a lot at when she had started making music. So I think just putting myself at the epicenter of that culture really, like, just forced me to wake up and, like, really see it through.

Meklit: The Nuyorican Poets Cafe is like a very famous, iconic place and when you did the open mic there the first time, what was going through your mind?

Felukah: Just super nervous that I wish I had gotten a different outfit together, that I wish I had any friends in the audience. But there were times when I would go and completely forget the lyrics cuz I was new to this whole, like, write a song, memorize it, go perform it. In poetry readings you're like, you get all the time in the world you're like, Your parents, and you're reading it right there, you know, they don't care. But like with rap, it’s like, oh my God, next level brain power. You know, I was shook.

So New York inspired everything. Like I feel like I needed to come here and I, it's not a coincidence and it's not,  I didn't know this was gonna happen at all. And since then it's just been like, okay, let's make this full-time. Please.

Meklit: Was there a moment when you knew that it could be full-time?

Felukah: Girl, I still don't know it can be full-time. I'm like out here like trying. Nah, like hamdullah, like knock on wood. This is what I do. I devote all my time to making music and pushing and promoting myself. 

But, yeah, when I got fired for my last waitressing job for sure, I was like, I'm not doing that again. Like I obviously suck at it. There's like at least 3,000 people on my phone who are telling me to, like, they would pull up to a show if I just kept making music. Why am I trying to please this one guy trying to tell me to get the frittata ingredients right? Like it didn't make sense. So, I was like, girl, stop trying to do that.

Meklit: Was there a moment when you knew that New York was home for you?

Felukah: My brother moved with me, which helped my parents kinda, like relax into this idea of me being, like, thousands of miles away. And my brother's also trans and he started, transitioning from female to male in New York. So that was a whole journey for me as well of like new meaning of what it means to be an ally in this journey. You know, like this is, this is home. This is like right here. 

So, us being here together and growing at the same space as like the queer Arab scene was growing in New York as well. Was, is, is still the most, like, rewarding part of it. Is like, Nefertiti’s, the first Egyptian like drag show. She puts on a lot of Arab acts and obviously so many of them are not welcome back home and not, you know, even like, are in good terms with their families and stuff. 

So, I played at Nefertiti’s before I played at Lailah’s, which is a really cool party organization that highlight as well, like queer Arab artists. And they all know that like, for the most part, cis straight, but at the same time, like this struggle means so much to me. And like that is the revolution in my eyes is like a space where we could literally just be free to love who we love and be who we are. And that just seems like a no-brainer to me. So.

Meklit: It's interesting because there's, there's something I think about hip hop. Like I grew, I grew up in Brooklyn in the eighties. And it was the time of early hip hop. And a lot of, when I think about my childhood was like, folks on street corners and ciphers and, you know, cardboard boxes being used for break dancing and, and like that just being everywhere in Brooklyn, you know.

But one of the things that I always kinda took from that was that, hip hop is about making your own spaces because you just need a circle of people and there it is. Like that for me is also why, like, I link that to why hip hop is global. You know?

Felukah: So I have, this takes me back to a very vivid memory in 2019 and to this day, there's still so much restriction on artists in Cairo, so many events were shut down so many shows. Like in my, the beginning of my career was shut down because I was trying to work with so many independent, like, free thinking organizations or like the one, only non-government published newspaper that we had in Cairo. That was, the event was with them. And the government heard about it and they're like, no, no, no. This sounds like way too much free thought. So they shut it down last minute.

 And I was over here feeling upset, whatever. And everyone was feeling really upset cuz this was like, we're talking about the very, like the dawn of like Egyptian rap 2019 when everybody was coming up in the game. I get a text from one of the photographers Photo Metro, who's like heavy in the scene. And he texted me, he's like, Lukah show is on. 

And I'm like, what do you mean you're gonna go against the government? He's like, no, we rented an apartment in Zamalek, pull up. We're getting speakers, we're getting a mic. If there's anything else you need, let us know asap. This show, like that we're talking about in another hour, I'm supposed to be there. And who cares about tickets, who cares about any of that? It was really just about the moment. 

So we reclaimed that, we carved that space out. And we rented a whole ass, other apartment in this abandoned building and the same artists came through. We had more artists come through actually to that random spur of the moment gig and then just hop on the mic and cipher it. And yeah, it was fire.

Meklit: Something I've thought about a lot as I've traveled is how hip hop has this thing where it can make space for the traditional poetries of wherever it goes. And I think that's part of why it makes a home in so many places around the world. But then I also think about the way that hip hop came from New York, from the Bronx and from black culture. And I  wonder if you, if you could talk a little bit about that kind of like balance or tension of like the origin of hip hop as black music and then it being a global culture. Like is that something you think about or, or take inspiration from?

Felukah: Like that's a black, that's a black art that we're talking about. And a lot of times I feel like artists will be putting on a blaccent. And I feel like that's the thing that really irks me. And it's something I think about a lot, which has also inspired me in more recent years and with my more recent work to incorporate more of just my, my sounds like from the Middle East. 

Bringing in that tabla, bringing in that rit, speaking in Arabic more. And kind of bridging that gap that I originally, like, intended to bridge. And not just using like the beats that I've heard Dr. Dre like put out. There has to be some elements of like my home and my motherland so that it feels like it's me telling the story.

I remember Fruit seller, we did sample an iconic Arabic song called Yana Ya Mafish by Tamer Hosny.

So an Indian producer friend of mine is the one who hit me with this. And he was like, you might recognize a sample that I found and I, like, fell in love with it right away.

In the song, really like I'm at the fruit vendor and I'm trying to decide like what's the freshest fruit for me that's really gonna take me on this journey right now?

Just having choice and selection I feel is just, it's such a privilege. And it doesn't always have to, like, complicate things. It doesn't always have to like weigh down on your subconscious. I think it's really freeing to toy with different ideas of like, not just what fruit am I about to eat, but what journey am about to go on, what am I trying to share with people?

And yeah, having that, that kind of meta like deep thought while you're at a fruit stand trying to decide if this banana’s ripe enough is just a day in my life, really. Tt's just like, ma'am, how many kilos? I'm like, sir, I'm having a moment right now.

Narration: That is Felukah,  F E L U K A H, on the song “Fruitseller.” You can hear the rest of the album anywhere you stream music.

If you enjoyed this story, consider sending it to a friend, or leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts. Believe me, that stuff really does help people find the show. Movement is produced by Ian Coss and myself, Meklit Hadero. Our co-creator and podcast godmother is Julie Caine. Our broadcast partner is The World. We are supported by The Mellon Foundation, The National Geographic Society and distributed by PRX.