"This is the only thing I still have left from Gaza. Everything else can be taken from me, but my voice can't be taken away. Even if I'm gone, my voice will still speak," Gazan-born rapper Ahmed Shamaly — known simply as Shamaly — tells The New Arab. "I use it to tell people what's happening and to make sure they know."
Born from the ashes of war-torn Gaza, Shamaly says his 2024 debut EP, Bdl Faqed , which roughly means "replacement of the lost," is rooted in the day-to-day realities of life in the Strip, which has now seen more than 70,000 deaths since the start of Israel's genocide in 2023.
Reflecting on the recording, Shamaly describes the process of making the album as entirely out of the ordinary, having completed it in a battery-powered studio in Rafah without a steady electricity supply, a setup that no longer exists after being destroyed in Israeli bombing.
Shamaly notes that it was only after leaving Gaza for Egypt in 2024 that he was able to finalise the album and assemble the tracks into a project that listeners around the world can now hear today.
In the track Sa7 , Shamaly reflects on daily life in Gaza before the genocide, capturing moments of hope while subtly commenting on the social constraints faced by young Palestinians.
From the quieter, pre-genocide moments, Bastana Feek began as a remix over a beat by the well-known artist JPEGMAFIA, but grew into a love story inspired by a relationship he experienced during the Gaza genocide.
In contrast, Falatan presents a raw portrayal of life under Israeli siege, exploring themes of trauma, resilience, and the psychological toll of living amid constant destruction, with listeners in Gaza praising the honesty of the lyrics and the immediacy of his storytelling.
But it is his track Ta5 that Shamaly calls his favourite to work on for the EP.
The song came together under unusual circumstances: struggling to find a beat that captured the right mood, Shamaly ended up producing it himself, and the process became an intensely personal creative experience.
"I produced this beat myself, and finished the whole song in just five hours," he recalls. "The lyrics came from different phases of my life — before the genocide, during it, and after. When I finished it, I was amazed at how it all came together. It felt completely real, like it was exactly the song I needed to make."
Explaining the different phases behind Ta5 , he says: "I wanted to talk about life before the genocide, like the small things that were happening — small conflicts, ongoing tension. You hear a bombing somewhere, something happening elsewhere, it's just constant tension, but small things, not one big event. We are in our homeland, but it feels like we are hostages in it, like we can't do anything. That was the first part.
"Then the second part is during the genocide. I would be sitting and hear gunshots or explosions, and sometimes I would confuse what I was hearing. I wrote things like 'I heard shots fired, shots fired' or I thought I heard a bombing. That's what that part is about," he shares. "Finally, after leaving Gaza for Egypt, I began collecting all the lyrics I had written at different times — before the trauma and during it. I brought them together, filled in what was missing, and they all came together as one song. That was Ta5 , which reflects the core of my experience of the genocide."
Looking back on the making of the album as a whole, Shamaly says he is grateful, describing it as "a whole process" and adding that "this album took a lot," before noting, "sometimes I thank God that I escaped all of this and that I can continue doing music and putting my feelings into words so people can understand." An old iPod, a new world Only 24, Shamaly has already come a long way, but none of it would have been possible without the musical upbringing that shaped him long before Bdl Faqed. Growing up in Gaza, he spent much of his childhood immersed in Western hip-hop, rock, and Arabic classics, developing an early connection to music that would later define his career.
An old iPod opened up a new world for him. Around 2008 and 2009, he listened to Akon, Eminem, Lil Wayne, "a lot of the big US artists because they were the most mainstream and reachable everywhere in the world."
As hip-hop evolved over the years, so did his tastes, moving from the older sounds of 50 Cent to artists like A$AP Rocky, Drake, and Travis Scott.
The rise of home studios also changed how he thought about making music himself. "When music changed from big studios and big teams into something you can do from your laptop or your home studio, that was the turning point for me," he explains.
Inspired by independent artists, he bought a microphone at 18 and started making his own tracks.
Even his artist name comes from the world he grew up in, with "Shamaly" being his family name and the name people in Gaza often called him.
He recalls, "One of our friends just said, 'We're calling you Shamaly every day, so Shamaly it is.'" It became a name that stuck and soon became inseparable from his identity and music.
Interestingly, 'Shamaly' also means 'the North' in Arabic, a reference he incorporates into several of his songs. A new life in exile Now living in France, Shamaly is focused on what comes next. He recently completed an EP titled $ olo , a project he handled almost entirely on his own, producing the beats and overseeing the mixing and mastering, while also collaborating with Cairo-based producer Nxptune , who is part of Egypt's growing trap scene.
Before that came XXXXX , an EP released after his move to France, reflecting a period of change in his life, balancing energy with introspection.
One of its tracks, Sh Bdh'm Mna ('What do they want from us?'), wrestles with the tension between pursuing his ambitions and carrying the weight of what he left behind in Gaza.
But while there is much to celebrate in Shamaly's journey so far, leaving Gaza behind has not come without difficulty.
"Right now, honestly, it feels like there’s no going back to Palestine," he says. "Imagine the street you walked through every day in your life doesn't exist anymore. Not just the buildings — the whole street."
He adds that what he misses most are the small details of everyday life — his friends, the sea, and the comforts of home.
"Life in Gaza was closed and isolated, but people still had the best houses, the best places, the best food — the best of everything," he tells The New Arab. "Now everything has changed because of the genocide. Sometimes it really hits me. It's very sad. But what can you do? You have to keep living your life." Zainab Mehdi is a British Iraqi journalist and the Associate Features Editor at The New Arab. She holds a BSc in Modern History and International Relations from the University of Essex and an MA in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from SOAS Follow her on Instagram: @zaiamehdi_ / @zainabmehdiwrites_