BEIRUT: “I believe that in high-pressure situations, great art comes out,” declares Nasser Shorbaji — aka Chyno With a Why? — a man who knows a few things about bearing burdens.
Over the past year, the Beirut-based rapper of Syrian-Filipino origin (the frivolous but racial-undertone-laden nickname was given to him by a Texan friend) has not only been grounded by the pandemic, but also had to deal with the death of close friend and fellow Lebanese-hip-hop mainstay, Double A The Preacherman. “Losing him was a big shock for all of us,” he says. A month earlier, Shorbaji was minutes away from potentially losing his own life during the devastating Beirut Port explosion.
“At 5:50, (MC, producer, collaborator and friend) Zoog called me and (another local rapper, friend and collaborator) El Rass to go hang out at his place. Zoog was on his way home, and I was brushing my teeth to head over. The blast was at, like, 6:07. His flat was completely destroyed.” He offers a deeply unsettling but, sadly, commonly heard admission in Beirut these days: “If we had already made it there when it happened… I wouldn’t be talking to you now.”
But there have been some silver linings. Shorbaji has just released “Mamluk,” his major-label debut album, following a deal with Warner Music Middle East. The 36-year-old’s path to that record contract hasn’t been straightforward.
“I’ve been in the scene so long, doing music independently — first as part of a group (the acclaimed Beirut hip-hop collective FareeQ el Atrash), and then solo — so I’m really focused on the art itself, and I’m not really disillusioned by being in a corporate environment,” he says. “But the whole label thing was kind of unexpected for me.
“Warner were a partner when I was doing (street festival) S.C.U.M. Week, so last year they asked me what I was doing, and I said I was putting ‘Mamluk’ together and started hitting them up with breadcrumbs,” he continues.
The label liked what they heard, and soon enough, floated the idea of signing him. “Then things got serious. We had to make more ‘bangers,’ which is something I was going to do anyway, but it became more of a conscious decision.”
Lyrically, “Mamluk” deals with themes of disenfranchisement and racial prejudice. The seeds were sown on his return to Beirut from Barcelona, where he wrote his 2015 LP “Making Music to Feel at Home.”
“A lot of (that record) had to do with being Arab there. I didn’t really focus much on my mixed-race background, but on how I was feeling about being away from my family in the Middle East.”
On his return to Lebanon, though, “It became more important to address how I felt in my environment. In (2019 single) ‘ALPHA CHYNO’ I used the word ‘Mamluken’ to refer to racist raps against me by other rappers who I don’t even really know. And this concept started coming together…”
Shorbaji decided to turn the warped mantra of racism on its head. “I didn’t want to be the person shouting criticism at a whole society, because that just victimizes my people in this region. I wanted to create this lore surrounding Asian culture, where a mamluk, being a servant, or working for people, just having a job in a hostile environment is a cool thing.”
“Mamluk” consists of 16 tracks packed with boisterous beats, earworm melodies and incisive rhymes.
“I love using double, or triple, entendres with my rhymes,” he says, highlighting “Pickle Rick,” a collab with rapper Illiam, as an example. “Cheng, cheng, cheng… that’s the sound of money, but it also has racist undertones: ‘Ching, chang, chong’ — I used to hear that in Syria all the time. But it also alludes to change; change your environment so you can succeed… With success comes money. It’s layered.”
The new album also includes a tribute to his fallen comrade, Double A The Preacherman, “’81 till Infinity.” “Zoog had this vocal of Double A’s that not many people had heard. The more I heard it, the more I thought I had to have it on the album.”
Despite the “high-pressure situations” of the past year, it’s clear the outspoken MC and organizer won’t be kept down for long.
“There’s been some talk about opening a school of hip-hop, that’s something I’m really excited about,” he says. “In the context of S.C.U.M. Week, I’d love to take Arab rappers to different cities around the world. And my dream is to write scripts for a series. Bottom line is, I just wanna turn heads.”
It’s safe to say that, with ‘Mamluk’, he and his collaborators — including Zoog, El Rass and producer/rapper MBee, but also Jordanian-Palestinian rapper The Synaptik and Jordan’s El Far3i — have managed to do just that.
