Nadine El Roubi Is For The “Culture”
Nadine El Roubi is passionate about her culture, and no soul could strip the genre-bending artist of that. El Roubi, who is proudly a Sudanese woman of Egyptian and Iranian ethnicity, hails from Virginia and has been magnetically drawn to the power of her identity since a young girl.
With music at her disposal, the rapper/singer found a way to express herself and become a contributing voice for a culture that is rarely seen (and celebrated) on the mainstream stage. With every successive effort the SZA-approved phenom drops, her pen grows denser, more confident in examining the intricate intersectional essence of being an Afro-Arab woman. And throughout her personal and artistic lives, she's honoring her culture whether you approve or not.
"It's so important for myself to honor who I am," Nadine tells In Search Of over Zoom. "And if I'm constantly trying to assimilate and compromise to Western expectations, that's a very easy way to lose your identity. And if I'm losing my cultural identity, it's a slippery slope to losing the things that come with my culture, which are my principles, values, and morals. So those are things that I heavily have to honor for myself."
On the heels of the multi-hyphenate releasing her latest single, "Culture," Nadine El Roubi blessed In Search Of Magazine with a conversation discussing identity, music in the streaming era, her latest single, and her plans for a new project.
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In Search of Magazine: When did you fall in love with music?
Nadine El Roubi: Oh, gosh. From a very young age. My dad is a house DJ, so I was always surrounded by music in the house. He collected records, he would take me to clubs when he was DJing. He also produced with a friend, so he always took me to the studio. I remember being four and trying to play the trombone, and it was three feet bigger than me (laughs). I've always loved music, always loved singing and listening to music.
ISO: How did that Egyptian and Iranian girl living in Boston want to become a musician? Looking at your dad and everything he did, I can imagine he played an integral part in that?
N: Big time. And actually, I'm Sudanese-Egyptian-Iranian, and I grew up in Virginia, funnily enough, and I'm only in Boston because my friend works here. I'm just crashing with her until I figure my life out music-wise (laughs). But I was always drawn to the arts, especially music, because I had the most exposure to that.
I also started learning piano at the age of 10 and [continued] to learn it for a decade playing Bach. I don't even know if I ever played Mozart per se, but a lot of Bach in high school and Johann Strauss as well.
ISO: Wow. That's super sick!
N: Yeah. I had classical music training with the piano, and then on top of that, I loved singing and doing covers, and it was always a [massive] part of me. And when it comes to writing as well, I grew up reading books, and my mom was big on literature. My dad gave me the music, and my mom gave me the writing because she instilled reading and a love for words in me from a young age. Birthday gifts were always books, and we always went to the libraries together. Both of those things were [constant].
ISO: With your new single, this banger called "Culture," produced by Thanks Joey, you described it in the press release as a 'Hip-Hop dance track celebrating free-spirited Middle Eastern and African women.'
Was it on your mind that you wanted to make an anthem for your people?
N: It was. Something that's always on my mind when I'm writing is 'how can this relate to the people who I relate to the most?'—people who come from my background. And I was writing something fun, something clubby that people could dance to. As I was writing the hook, I imagined in my head the girls I party with, my friends from places like Sudan, Egypt, Morocco, and Pakistan. All of these girls being so beautiful and glamorous, and they look so different from, to put it bluntly, white girls (laughs). I mean, they have such a beautiful, distinct look.
Actually, the inspiration came mainly from this party that I went to called Laylit, it's a Middle Eastern party collective, and they do these club nights in different cities. I went to one in New York City, and it was the coolest experience. I had just arrived in NYC from Cairo, I was already feeling homesick. So I'm in this huge club, and they're playing Arab beats, and it's all these beautiful Arab girls in the bathroom doing their makeup who have these gorgeous structured noses and faces and this very heavy eye makeup, and it was so cool to be around. I was like, 'Oh my gosh. I just want to make a song for girls who party like that.'
I was writing that line about beautiful girls, and it's like women were on the cover of a magazine, but not something like Vogue. My first thought was rhyming something with Vogue, and I was like, 'But we never see our people on their cover often.' There's this magazine that a Sudanese friend of mine founded, and it's called Azeema Magazine, based in the UK, and they always have the most beautiful women of color on the cover, so I referenced that. The whole point of the song is to be fun; anyone can dance to it. But to me, and maybe this is something that I would only see, but there's a [profound] message of our representation, and it's going international on the global scale very soon.
ISO: And "Culture" follows your previous single, "New Era," which I feel is appropriate because sonically, compared to Triplicity EP, you entered into a new era of your artistry. I did my snooping on your IG (laughs). It appears to be wiped clean. This is probably me just being a dedicated journalist, but a new project must be on the way. A full-length project?
N: Oh my gosh, you're so good! (laughs) Yeah. There is a new project on the way, and it's going to be a Freestyles part two. So last year, I dropped [Freestyles part one], and it was a compilation of all the verses I've been sharing on Instagram, which had gotten high traction. I wanted to put them in one place and tell a story with them, so I did that.
It did well in my eyes, honestly. If you look at streaming and these things, it wasn't a "numbers success," but it was a success in that it told my story very well, and the branding around it was very cool. And so I wanted to do the same thing, a [sequel] this year, so that's what I'm currently working on.
And it will be the same concept, a compilation of verses I've been sharing on Instagram in the last year. Also, to give people more incentive to hear it, I'm going to have verses on there and songs that I haven't shared before, so I'm very excited!
ISO: You touched on it a little bit, but now that we're in this era of streaming, is there a challenge, you think, for women like you who are not as widely represented on a mainstream sort of level in music? Do you feel discouraged with what you're doing?
N: Yeah. 100% I've been very discouraged in this [journey]. You know what's so funny? I think it's very cool to talk about how the music infrastructure in the Middle East is now growing. You're seeing a lot of these major Western labels like Universal, Sony, Warner, and Empire—which is independent but still quite big; all of them are now migrating to the Middle East and having Middle Eastern branches, and it's interesting.
They're signing all these Arab artists, which feels like a big deal. "Oh, you're signed to Universal MENA," which is Universal Middle East and North Africa. But the issue with that is that all the mistakes that Western labels have been making and extorting artists, not having transparent contracts or relationships with the artists, are now being made in the Middle East. We had the opportunity to create [an entirely] new infrastructure that honors creatives. And the same faulty business models are being replicated, which means that we, as a community, Arab artists, are now going through the same issue of things like playlisting being gatekept by these industry heads.
So even in a market where we should be thriving and succeeding, and with artists like me who are making noise in the region, and even those not, should be getting more streams, playlisting, and DSP attention. We did not learn from history at all.
So, yeah, the streaming thing has been super discouraging. But I've decided not to care about it and the idea of making it or blowing up anymore. I realized that I need to make music for myself, [disregarding] the idea of consistency or releasing every month and having these frameworks that I've put myself in just to "make it." I'm over it, honestly.
ISO: I appreciate that honesty. Is there anything else that you want to mention that you feel is super important that you've got coming up?
N: I have a friend, Felukah, and she is an Egyptian artist based in New York. She's super cool. She's creating a summer series where it's called Farasha Party Series, and she's taking over. It'll be at Public Records, and just having a couple of shows for a weekend or three days. And I'm going to be closing the series with her on the last day, me, her, and another artist who hasn't been confirmed yet, and that's happening on August 9th.
