DUBAI: When Saudi rapper, stand-up comedian, writer and actor Moayad Al-Nefaie appeared on stage for the first time — in a school play — a strange thing happened: The stutter that had afflicted him throughout his childhood disappeared.
“Zero,” he says. “Nothing. So I was, like, ‘OK, when I act I don’t stutter. Let me tap into that.’”
It would be too simplistic to suggest that this moment decided Al-Nefaie’s career path, but combine it with other stories from his childhood and it does seem he was fated to become a storyteller.
Take the love of poetry he inherited from his grandfather, to whom he pays tribute in the interlude on his recently released debut album, “Batn Al-Shaer.”
“My dad’s dad was this traditional Bedouin who didn’t even read and write. But we went on this journey of poetry and stories together; I memorized hundreds of lines of ancient poetry because of him,” Al-Nefaie tells Arab News. “And I talk about my grandma from my mother’s side — she’s from Sudan — and she used to sing songs and improv with us when we were young.”
But the main inspiration for “everything in my life” is his parents. And that has been the case ever since he was born in the small town of Jonesboro in Arkansas, US — a place so obscure, he says, that “even Americans are like, ‘What? You were born where?’ They don’t even know it.”
So why Arkansas?
“My dad — who’s a very talented and very funny and very unique individual — studied computer science back in the Eighties. That’s why he went to the States. And my mom was studying psychology with him at Arkansas State University.” His mother went on to become a professor and currently teaches in Saudi Arabia, where the family returned when Al-Nefaie was eight.
“My mom’s doctorate was in the impact of storytelling on growth and development. So me and my siblings were like lab rats, you know? But it helped me out so much,” Al-Nefaie continues.
He stresses several times how supportive his parents have been. Even when, after studying medicine for eight years, he told them he wanted to quit to “explore and experiment.”
“It was a long talk, but eventually they were like, ‘Yeah. We agree. Do your thing.’”
That “thing” was his comedy, which, naturally enough, is built around storytelling and playing characters (“You can see the impact of my mom and dad,” he says).
Given his love of storytelling and passion for poetry, it’s no surprise that Al-Nefaie branched out into hip-hop. The title of his debut album roughly translates to “Belly of the Poet” — an allusion to an Arabic phrase, “The meaning is inside the belly of the poet,” to describe how poets may say one thing but mean another.
“It’s fun, and it comes from a place where the saying already has a lot of meanings in the culture – it’s rooted,” he says.
His raps combine poetry and hip-hop to create songs he describes as “a mixture of wisdom and humor.” He also writes, he says, in “in a pan-Arabic way — from the beginning I’ve tried to do that. I don’t want to pigeonhole myself. Arabic is so diverse.”
Al-Nefaie declares himself an equally big fan of all the guests on his album. (Supplied)
To illustrate his claim that it’s easier to become a poet or rapper in Arabic, he asks me to Google how many words there are in English compared to Arabic. English has roughly 600,000 words. Arabic around 12.3 million. “You see? The language gives you a lot of freedom,” he says.
The new record is not the vanity project of an actor wishing he was a musician. Al-Nefaie is the real deal, as his many collaborators on the album will attest, not least acclaimed Jordanian-Palestinian rapper The Synaptik, who features on the album’s lead single “Mashi El-Hal.”
“In my eyes, Synaptik is the best recording artist in the region. Not just the best rapper, the best recording artist,” Al-Nefaie says. “He’s so wise in the way he writes and in his melodies. I love the guy as an artist.”
Al-Nefaie declares himself an equally big fan of all the guests on his album. He hopes some will be able to join him at gigs on the regional tour he’s looking to undertake soon — all part of the “oversaturation” that he says, only half-jokingly, he’s planning. He knows that it might take overkill to break through.
“We have to acknowledge that the market is so new. Not everybody really accepts Arabic hip-hop yet,” he says. “The thing I want to do with this album is to make the gap between poetry and our authentic culture and hip-hop smaller. Like, ‘Guys, it’s linked together. It’s the same thing.’”
