On the rise for the past five years, the region’s rap scene has been growing from strength to strength, and the Kingdom of Morocco is proving to be no different. The Arab World’s most-streamed artist of 2021, El Grande Toto, is still on track with his mission towards global notoriety, ensuring that everyone gets a fair share of recognition and spotlight as he has just released, what we think is the Middle East and North Africa’s most ambitious collaborative track to this day.
The 25-year-old rapper is confirming his status as a heavyweight in the Arab rap industry, as gathered some of his home country’s most lyrically talented and sonically exploring MCs to join him on a booming eight-minute-long track. Willing to use his platform to serve his fellow comrades, “Salina”, sees a total of 12 rappers, including Toto himself, jump on a hard-hitting drill-esque beat to put Morocco on the map.
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The star studded line up included the likes of Stormy, fresh off the back of his recent release ‘Omri Ana’, also featuring Houda Abouz aka Khtek known for style and flow, and her latest track ‘Bizarre’, and a long list of others, all answered positively to the Casablanca-native’s invitation to shell out some fire bars. The track was produced by a list of producers, the most well known of which is Double A, whose sound is now synonymous with BMJ City Block, being of course Morocco’s largest rap record label and unsurprisingly, the label El Grande Toto is currently signed to. In total, 20 names can be read being linked to this monumental project which we hope to see more of and further developed soon in the times to come.
Establishing their uniqueness and bottomless creativity for the world to enjoy and bop their heads to, the song’s release was accompanied by a street set music video shot in Morocco’s economic and cultural hub, Casablanca. Through the song, we see the dominating attire and signature dance moves that garnish London’s underground music scene be expatriated and appropriated over the Mediterranean by this cohort of young gifted artists.
Explosive and reinvigorating, the energy diffusing track is a banger like we’re not too used to seeing come out of the region. Slowly reaching the 2 million view benchmark in a little less than four days since its initial release, you can expect Salina to become one of this summer’s viral hits, spun on repeat.
