Bad Boys

Provocation, poor taste, questionable ethics, incompetence, regrettable decisions, and egregious criminal acts, featuring:

Russia's "unsurpassed master of profanity." 

The Cairene laundry presser whose ode to bin Laden was yanked from the Egyptian airwaves. 

The troubled Jamaican genius who spent the last years of his short life in prison for murder. 

Japan's greatest unpop star. 

The Beirut underground star whose fuck you to Lebanon's military leaders nearly ended his career. 

The creepy American hustler whose death unleashed a torrent of horrifying not-so-secret secrets.

Listen to this show in the archives

Various Artists | Best Egyptian Pop

Throw yourself into Mahmoud el Hasani's "Sagara Bouny"

Grab all 19 mind-blowing tracks here.

As a super-outgoing Leo with a massive, unrestrained ego, it's very rare that I am short on words.

This is one of those occasions. 

I picked this album up at the Nile Deli on Steinway Street yesterday along with a few other CDs that I'd been meaning to bring home for a while. I hadn't, for reasons that are unclear to me now, ever seen this gem before. How was this possible? The thing was grime-encrusted and must have been sitting in the store for years. A store that I frequent at least once a month, drooling, cash in hand, prowling for sonic treasure.

I instantly fell in love with the cover. I assumed that this wasn't going to be like any of the other Egyptian CDs I'd picked up from this place. I was right.

Is this chaabi? It isn't so-called "electro-chaabi," I know that. There's no autotune, for one thing. It may, in fact, predate autotune. But it has all of the other elements. Insane use of sound effects. KickThrillAss rhythms. Vocals that will put hair on your back. 

Whatever it is, whatever it's called, whenever it was recorded, you're not ever going to forget it.

Abou el Leef | Super Leefa

Reupped by popular demand here. 

This is, without question, my absolute favorite album of 2012. Yes, you heard me correctly. Super Leefa, the cover of which features what looks like a homeless guy in a tattered superhero costume, is my favorite album of the year.

And yet, owing to (a) my prior ignorance of Abu el Leef's up-to-the-moment sweepingly postmodern Egyptian pop and (b) the aforementioned CD cover, in all its sad, be-bearded homeless-looking-guy glory, I avoided picking up a 
copy for months after first seeing it in the racks and shelves at the Nile Deli and Alfra on Steinway Street. I don't know what I thought it was. A comedy album? Some sort of Weird Al of Arabia? 

No. It's actually a sha'bi record, with Regular Joe Cairo lyrics about how music isn't against Islam, how people like to get all up in your business, and how people living an honest an honorable life are often the first to get stepped on by everyone else. The music, though, is less sha'bi and pure, unadulterated, inventive pop--a range of it, from 70s US funk and disco to 60s popular Egyptian music to contemporary dance and house.

Born Nader Anwar Gaber in Alexandria in 1968, el Leef is a relatively late bloomer, having recorded his first album (which includes the hit single "King Kong") in 2010, when he was 42. His music divides audiences: in Egypt, you apparently love him or hate him.

You know where your bodega proprietor stands on the matter. Where stands you?

Hakim | Greatest Hits

Listen to "Wala Waled"

Pick it up here.

As snow pours down into New York, thousands of people remain without power--to say nothing of those who have lost their homes altogether. (The fate of more than one of my co-workers.) So it seems almost criminal to pull down this uber-celebratory disc of polycarbonate plastic to rip for you all this evening. But, then, we do have something to celebrate tonight: The United States seems to be on the verge of slowly--key words "verge" and "slowly"--shifting a bit to the left. 

Legalized marijuana in Colorado and Washington. Same-sex marriage in Maryland and Maine and probably Washington? (I've sort of lost track of that.) Tammy Baldwin elected as first openly gay senator in Wisconsin. More women in the house of reps now than ever before. That whole Todd Akin thing shut down by Claire McCaskill in Mizz freakin' Zouri while in Indiana, God's Will intending for Richard Mourdock's political career to get fucked. Finally, President Obama reelected, despite having pissed off just about as many liberals over the last four years as he has conservatives.

Yes, I know that close to half of the voting population voted for that other guy. And that celebrating your gay marriage by getting stoned is not legal in most states--or federally, for that matter. And that Michele Bachmann, a woman who believes that slavery was eradicated by our founding fathers, that getting vaccinated for HPV leads to mental retardation, and that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the U.S. government, actually held her house seat in Minnesota. (Having lived in Minneapolis-St. Paul for six years in the 1990s, I am extremely disappointed with my former state mates.)

But, still. As even conservative poll aggregation enthusiast Dick "I Goofed!" Morris seems to be realizing, the United States is a multi-culture, not a mono-culture. And we sort of showed that, kinda sorta, via last night's elections. 

So, in celebration: Could there be anything more life-affirming, more get-you-up-off-your-ass-and-dancin', than Hakim? I found this best-of album at the Nile Deli on Steinway Street a couple of days after Sandy had passed and picked it up to lift my spirits. A few days after that, I offer it to you, for yours.

Hakim | Nazra

From an interview with Hakim earlier this year:

B.E.: So, you made the first album [Nazra]. You wanted to make something new with sha'bi music. What was new in the very beginning, in that first record?

Hakim: The music was very new, for sha'bi music. Instruments. All the instruments. Hamid El Shari's fingers, on the keyboard, this is new. The first time there is keyboard for sha'bi music. The first time electric bass for sha'bi music.

B.E.: ... You added those things ... And what happened after it was released?

Hakim: I don't know. The rain has come. In three days. Number one in the Middle East. Like a bird flu! Really. Really. Like bird flu. [LAUGHS]

This, Hakim's first album, changed Egyptian pop music forever. What's incredible is that, as great as Hakim has been over the years--and he's pretty obviously one of the true greats of pop music--this album (which I just played for the first time, finally having found it at the Nile Deli on Steinway Street this evening, after years of searching) still rocks as hard as it must have rocked back in 1992 when it was first released.



Listen to "El Bo'd Laa"

Get it all here.