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Imagine making beats in a world that might never hear them. There was a time when that was the cold reality for Nawaf Alalyan and many other aspiring artists in Saudi Arabia. Yet the quiet momentum that had been building for years before plans for modernisation were revealed in 2016 meant the future MC sensed the Kingdom was on the brink of a breakthrough.
Describing the crackle of optimism, he recalls, “As an individual living in Saudi, I felt the country was opening up way before they announced Vision 2030. We never had an official statement from the government, so we didn’t label it, but everyone knew. We just didn’t know when. Vision 2030 is almost symbolic of what was happening even before they announced it.” That was it. Saudi’s ambitious goals instantly became the catalyst for not just Nawaf, but for the entire nation, to level up. “It had everything to do with my decision of getting into music,” he admits. “That was when I thought, ‘Okay, now I need to have a plan, and I have all these beats I’ve been making…’ Forget about the beats, I’d been working on my sound since 2010, but had never seen any reason to post online, and even when I did, I used to share targeting just the world.”
Suddenly he had a ready-made local audience and a reason to forge his own musical identity, and by 2019 Nawaf started distributing music under the moniker of Ntitled. “When you dropped a song, you never knew who you’re singing for, who you’re writing for, who this music’s for, but when Vision 2030 happened, I decided to focus more on our culture,” he explains. “Same way Jay-Z raps for his hometown, that’s who I needed to rap for. I needed to start rapping more in Arabic and learn how to fuse hip-hop with my culture – whether it’s digging deeper, using Najdi, the Saudi language, or sampling traditional instruments.”
Ntitled soon started challenging himself to push harder: “Okay, now I got that. How can I include the oud? How can I include the Arabic scales in my music? How can I start doing that? When you play a note on the Arabic scale, it’s nothing like any other scale in the world.” Just as hip-hop has always been rooted in social commentary of the zeitgeist, with tracks such as Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five’s The Message and Public Enemy’s Fight The Power critiquing social injustices in New York and the biases of US political system, Ntitled is using his lyrics to document the Saudi youthquake. “These are all real-life stories that either happened around me or around people I know,” he confirms. “These are stories people talk about – ‘Oh, you know what happened to this guy, that guy?’ – or you’ve seen it in front of your own eyes. It might’ve happened to me, definitely. I always try to paint a picture that’s real, because in the end, I’m talking to people that come from where I come from. I need to give them the real story.”
His 2021 concept album Eden, for example, tells the harrowing story of the protagonist’s journey to the afterlife. “You will always hear the facts in hip-hop, you know what I’m saying? In other genres, there’s an etiquette to what you can or can’t say, or how to say it, but hip-hop has always been a way for me to channel that truth, and it’s all real. I’m talking about my generation,” he attests. “I’m talking about the generation who saw Saudi how it was and witnessed the change.” Ntitled believes “you have to collaborate to elevate”, and his musical co-conspirators include Moayad and Kali-B, and Sudanese-Saudi rappers Dafencii and Walgz.
“I’m always trying to explore new sounds,” he acknowledges. “One day I’m looking for someone who’s into Khaleeji music, just to explore that. And maybe another day I’m looking for someone who has a great voice, for instance, and at other times I need a guy who’s in a band – I need to lock in with that guy, because that guy knows about stuff that I’ve never experienced.” The Riyadh-based producer values honesty, flexibility, and alignment in his creative partnerships. “This is something I really look for when I make music with someone – I really like to sit down and talk about the track we’re making, what we’re doing, and why are we doing it. How can we make this sound dope? How can we make this sound better? How can the message be presented? Very small details before we get into the actual track, before we get into our own zones and writing and stuff. And I realise it’s not easy,” he concedes. “Everyone makes music their own way, but there’s not a lot of people who make it in that way, which I find very helpful when making music.”
One of his most famous collaborators and supporters to date, who regards him as “family”, is Swizz Beatz, who was sent his track Ali from the album Lowkey via a private link in 2021 by their mutual friends Noor Taher, who manages Swizz’s Saudiborn creative agency Good Intentions, and Adel AlGhamdi, founder, host and producer of the take-no-prisoners podcast Pass The Kabsa. “So, basically, one of my tracks came to his attention, and then he reached out through a couple of friends,” NTitled recalls. “He sent us beats for days, and we made over 30 tracks from those beats.” The result was MOYA, an album that dropped in AlUla in 2022 capturing the sound and story of Saudi Arabia, produced by Ntitled, exec-produced by Swizz, featuring fellow local artists Jeed, Kali-B, Aziz.wav, Shaolin, Shiloh, Rayan, and producers Saud and NBL.
“I definitely want to make a song with Swizz – with me and him on the track,” he clarifies, “because we’ve been talking about it for a while. So, that’s a dream that I can actually make happen soon.” Like many of his contemporaries, Ntitled has his sights set on the States. “I want to produce for Kodak, I want to produce for Kendrick…” he reveals. But unlike many Saudi artists, he’s already made his performance debut in the birthplace of hiphop thanks to the Music Commission of Saudi Arabia. “It was a great experience. We performed there, filled a theatre, met a lot of artists, connected with a lot of music industry executives,” he remembers of the LA3C Festival in DTLA in November 2023 where he shared the line-up alongside Erykah Badu, Herbie Hancock, and Questlove plus fellow Saudi talents Mishaal Tamer and Tamtam.
On the efforts of the Music Commission to support the sector, he adds:”
“We’re at the forefront of what the Saudi music scene is trying to do in the years to come, and I think the Music Commission has proven that it knows that we, as a whole, are unified. It also recognises our individual contributions, so whether you’re the head of MDLBEAST or you’re an artist, there is an understanding that everyone has a role to play, and a collective push towards our shared goals.”
The self-taught MC isn’t the first Saudi artist with global aspirations to have been confronted with preconceptions about his homeland, and disbelief that the Gulf region even has its own hip-hop scenes. “And then I start explaining how poetry has been influential in our culture for generations – you’re talking about 2,000, 3,000 years – and then we start getting into arguments about what came first, poetry or rap,” he sighs. “It’s the same thing.” Then, Ntitled may even reference Moayad’s album Dabbaba, which he co-produced, that explores the relationship between rap and poetry to prove his point.
His message to music lovers beyond the borders of the Kingdom? “The same stories you guys are having, we have them, regardless of the relationship between your country and my country,” he declares. “When you think of Saudis as individuals and listen to our stories, we’re just normal people. If you want to know who we are, look at yourself.” Ntitled has been credited with shaping the new sound and direction of contemporary Saudi music – even though this is the first he’s heard of it. “That’s cool,” he reflects.
“I’m not even close to happy with the sound right now, but I really hope someone does it.” Just as hip-hop was literally built from the beats of its ancestors just over half a century ago – with the earliest pioneers in New York looping samples from jazz, funk, and soul records since 1973 – Ntitled is convinced Saudi hip-hop will find its sonic identity by following the same traditions.
“That is exactly how we’re going to create our sound when we start doing that. And what I would consider Saudi music heritage is definitely the Talal Maddah songs, the Mohammed Abdu songs, even the Arabic songs that Saudis listen to – my mother used to play Umm Kulthum all the time. I would totally imagine a Saudi hip-hop anthem that has an Umm Kulthum sample in it, even though she’s Egyptian. This is the heritage you need to tap into to capture our sound,” he insists. He even raps over the Mohammed Abdu classic Al Ma’azim (المعازيم) in his recent release, الجلسة الأولى: فريستايل, to bear this out. With astonishing self-awareness in an often ego-driven genre, for Ntitled, the collective pursuit of the Saudi sound is more important than his individual legacy, and his belief in the future potential of the community is bigger than hip-hop. “I want to wake up, listen to a track that is 10 times better than anything I could ever do, and it’s Saudi. If that happened, even if they never heard of me, I would know for a fact, khalas, we’re getting there, and that will make me even happier.”
Photography: Ahmed Chredi
Styling: Qwan Anthony
Senior Producer: Steff Hawker
Production Coordinator: Chloe Christodoulou
Production: Jawaher Aldokheel
Photography Assistant: Mitab Al-Maliki
Styling Assistant: Najat Elhussein
Communications Manager: Johana V. Dana
Words: Alison Tay
Special thanks to WAZIC Studio
Talent: Ntitled
