Graffiti of Tupac Shakur in Mauritania. (Photo: Jean-Pierre Filiu)
Werman: You must identify, obviously, like many people, an American characteristic in rap music, even though it’s spread all over the world. How does the music differ, though, or maybe is it the same, when you find it in the Middle East talking about Arab Spring and revolution and democracy?
Filiu: Well, first they all idolize Tupac Shakur.
Werman: Really?
Filiu: For them, Tupac is really the man, you know.
Werman: How do you see this? Posters in rappers’ room, or t-shirts?
Filiu: Yes, they speak about him and they have quotes about him and they sample his song. For example, in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, were just hanging around by the market and I saw a Tupac graph [sic] on the wall and I immediately stopped the car, came out. I say I will join you later, and I spent the whole afternoon with the local hip hop gang.
Werman: Wow.
Filiu: That was wonderful, because as this revolution is basically a generational revolution. It’s really not flower power, but youth power, you know, empowerment of the younger generation that can’t accept as normal to have those dictators dictating its fate until the end.
Werman: What did the Mauritanians have to say about Tupac Shakur? Why did they like him?
Filiu: The more politicized ones know about the Black Panthers background of him, and the whole idea that he was, you know, protesting against the social order, that he had a message, that he was involved in the community. So they don’t know so much the issue about gang leaders, West Coast, East Coast, or the Las Vegas shooting. It’s more the ideas that he was a youngster like them expressing his rage. I spent a lot of time, for example, with rappers in Benghazi, which is not spontaneously[..]ociated with hip hop music. In Libya it’s incredible the quality of the rhymes. They are really inventive. And it was a mix, English, Arabic, classical Arabic, colloquial Arabic, political songs. It’s really a booming scene all over.