Egyptian Rapper Felukah Crowns Identity on New Album ‘Hibiskiss’

“This marks the beginning of a new era for me,” Egyptian rapper and singer Sara El-Messiry, known professionally as Felukah, told Arab News. She was discussing her forthcoming album, Hibiskiss, a nine-track record that sees the artist delving deeper than ever into questions of identity, womanhood, culture, and belonging.

The album arrives on October 9, to be followed by a world tour opening in London on October 12. Felukah has been rehearsing at Waha Studios, her recently launched recording facility in Cairo, after returning to Egypt in April following nearly nine years in New York.

“I’m so excited to just meet the Falayek — my name for my fans — all around the world, to sing and dance with everyone, and connect,” she said.

Named and styled after the hibiscus flower, Hibiskiss stitches Cairo to New York, tracing themes of women’s issues, industry struggles, love, loss, and the experience of being a woman from the East navigating the West and returning home.

“I think blossoming to me right now means following my heart,” Felukah explained. “The project is an actual ‘kiss’ for my inner child and for anyone else who can relate to my message.”

Although Egypt has shaped Arabic pop for generations, artists working in the West are often burdened with the expectation of speaking for an entire region — a pressure Arab women in hip-hop, a genre still largely dominated by men, face twofold.

“I carry my Egyptian identity like a crown,” Felukah asserted. “I’m so proud of where I come from, and if I can add to the magnificent fabric of Arabic music and pop culture in any way, I’ll die happy.”

The artist built Hibiskiss around a community of multicultural, multilingual collaborators whose work reflects the record’s wider ideas about identity and connection. Xiuhtezcatl — a 25-year-old Indigenous artist and activist from Xochimilco, Mexico — features on “Azucar,” the single released September 18. The track moves fluidly between Arabic, Spanish, and English, serving as an exchange between SWANA and Indigenous communities about homelands, borders, and the sweetness found inside struggle.

“Xiuhtezcatl is someone I’ve admired since I discovered him three years ago,” Felukah said. “We performed together in New York and I instantly realized we’re talking about the same thing: taking the land back from the colonizers, representing our cultures that have been silenced by the oppressor, and showing the younger generation that there is so much power and joy in unity.” She added that the response to the track has been “overwhelmingly beautiful.”

Her collaboration with London-based Palestinian singer Lana Lubany and Palestinian-Italian artist Tära — “Sahara” — is, she said, “bursting with Arab feminine power.”

“The three of us show up as ourselves unapologetically and challenge the status quo in many ways,” Felukah continued. “From our lyrical and musical content to our styling choices, we’re here to change the game.”

Perhaps the album’s most distinctly Egyptian moment is “Shut Up Your Mouse,” which samples Mona Al-Beheiri, the Egyptian woman who became a viral sensation after telling then-U.S. President Barack Obama on television in 2014, “We are Egyptian women! Shut up your mouth, Obama!”

The track confronts the ways Arab women have been spoken about in the West. “We have been talked down to, belittled, compared to Western women for years, and are still fighting for our rights every day,” Felukah said. “I found myself writing a song inspired by the message that, as an Egyptian woman, I’m telling you to shut up.”

Hibiskiss arrives at a moment when the music industry and creative fields broadly are confronting issues surrounding AI and authorship. The album, with its extensive list of co-creators, stands as a counterexample Felukah describes as moving toward “something bigger than music.” On the question of AI, she has chosen her side decisively.

“AI is ruining art, wrecking our brains and polluting our water,” she said. “Now more than ever, there is power in community.”

At a time when cultures seem increasingly fractured, she sees music as a way of resisting isolation. “I’m not trying to be better than any Western artists; I want to collaborate with everyone who sees the vision and the value in what I do,” she said. “We are on this Earth to connect with each other and uplift each other.”

From New York-based producer Gloria Kaiyi Hui, “who helped produce the bulk of the album,” to the artists featured across its tracks, the record appears to have been made with a spirit of play.

“I love it when I’m giggling in a session and the ideas are flowing like honey,” Felukah said. “I feel incredibly blessed and I’m confident that Hibiskiss is my best work yet.”

That joy in the studio fuels her ambitions. “I’m aching to make an Arabic jazz album,” she revealed, adding that she also hopes to venture into film and acting.

“There is more work to be done,” she said, “more souls to inspire and more stories to tell before my time is up.”

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