Broken Records
Arab hip-hop is the subject here, tracked through two of its best-known figures, Omar Offendum and The Narcicyst, as they perform, write, and talk about building a career between Arab identity and a Western-dominated music industry. Directed by three Northwestern University in Qatar students, Rana Khaled, Shannon Farhoud, and Ashlene Ramadan, the film follows the artists through interviews and studio and stage footage that show how the genre pulls from Arabic poetic tradition, American rap, and whatever local sound surrounds each artist, rather than settling into one style. Offendum and The Narcicyst speak about censorship, accusations of cultural appropriation, and the difficulty of getting radio play or label support as Arab artists working largely outside the Gulf and Levant mainstream. The film treats the genre as plural rather than singular, letting the two artists disagree with each other about influences and audience. It closes on the same open question the artists live with: how to keep making the music without losing either half of it.