DAM
دام
Musician
•
Palestine
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Lyd,
Palestine
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✓ Verified
Pioneering Palestinian hip hop group from Lyd whose politically charged Arabic rap opened the door for a generation of Arab MCs worldwide.
DAM formed in the city of Lyd in the late 1990s, becoming widely recognized as the first Palestinian hip hop group to record and release music, at a time when Arabic rap barely existed as a category.
Built around brothers Tamer and Suhell Nafar alongside Mahmoud Jreri, the group used hip hop’s tradition of direct address to write about occupation, inequality, and daily life in Lyd with a bluntness that Arabic pop radio rarely allowed. Tracks like “Meen Erhabi” (Who’s the Terrorist) circulated widely across the Arab world through word of mouth and early internet file sharing long before streaming existed.
Decades on, DAM’s influence runs through nearly every Arabic language rapper who came after them, from Ramallah to the diaspora scenes of Berlin, Paris, and Brooklyn, most of whom point back to DAM as the group that proved Arabic rap could carry real political weight.
Languages
Arabic, Hebrew, English
Representation
Independent