“I realized that music alone is not a good enough reason; you must have cultural incentives to improve your sound.” Ntitled may have been the one to utter this take during his interview with Billboard Arabia, but the four other young Saudi stars gracing the cover of the May 2024 issue might as well share the sentiment. Looking at their collective huddle on the cover, one might think the five artists are close peers, but in reality, their journeys in the music industry have little in common. Each of them has taken a unique path and shaped a unique experience. From genres and musical taste to breakthroughs, plans and projects, each of the five Saudi talents has gone his or her own way.
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Perhaps the only common factor in their journey is their identity as young individuals who grew up in the same culture and witnessed the recent historical shift in Saudi Arabia. Just as the five artists launched into their careers, new horizons for arts, media and society as a whole were opening up in Saudi Arabia at an unprecedented scale. Though this change impacted the lives and experiences of the entire Saudi society, we could trace in our conversations with these young artists the specificity of this impact on the path that each one of them chose to make music that influences and is influenced by Saudi culture.
While the spark for Abdulaziz Mane and Jori Kattan’s music careers were talent shows, their determination to prove their strong sound and unique talent is what got them to stardom. Now they stand before a different kind of challenge: using their sound and talent to deliver delightful pop music experiences. As they launched their first releases, new horizons opened up to them. Soon after Jori composed her first track a few years back, she found herself yearning to pour herself into the melodies again and compose her own music. For his part, the young Abdulaziz Mane’s experience in theater quickly made him realize the versatility of his artistic identity.
The same goes for Hams Fekri, who won the first season of Saudi Idol, where she dazzled the giants of Arabic pop music with every performance. When we delve into Hams’ journey, we understand that her path to stardom was inevitable, what with the incredible talent of her mother, Amani Al-Shafei, running in her veins. And, like her mother, Hams is a master of the Shaabi pop genre. Today, whichever genre Hams chooses to embrace, she imbues with her original voice and that refined sound of artists rooted in the melodies of their environment.
For Ntitled and Tamtam, the challenge lay not in singing tarab or following the rules of Arabic composition to reach the masses. Instead, they went for a more diverse experience, delivering local sounds wrapped in international genres. They are not afraid to pepper their tracks with a dash of English, or other languages, even, says Tamtam, who plans on mixing in some Spanish in one of her upcoming tracks, before carrying on with what she describes as her year of Arabic releases.
Besides music, Tamtam finds joy in writing. As in her debut, Gender Game, many of the singer-songwriter’s tracks revolve around similar themes (empowering women to raise their voices and conveying her own experiences), her writing style a testament to her bold and rebellious personality. Tamtam cares more about her growth as an artist than the size of her discography or the long stretches of time between her releases.
Ntitled, for his part, has successfully etched his name on the Saudi hip-hop scene, despite his young age. In a short period of time, he has established strong partnerships in the regional music scene, including “Ween Yabu” with Dafencii, “Adan” with Moayad & Kali-B, and “LkLk” with the producer Khayyat, as well as several experiments of his own as a producer. His talent caught the attention of Swizz Beatz during one of his first visits to Saudi Arabia, who discussed his collaboration with Ntitled in an interview with Billboard Arabia, which Ntitled confirmed in his interview will be released soon.
