Perfect Harmony: ABIR Brings The HEAT With Her New EP
Moroccan-American singer, ABIR, is set to invade feel-good playlists with her new album. We spoke to the powerhouse pop star about identity, discrimination and why she won’t let anyone try to define her
Twenty-six-year-old Arab pop artist, ABIR’s new smoldering album Heat, transcends two cultures and expectations. Raised in the United States by Moroccan parents, the Brooklyn-based singer remained close to her family’s roots through music. The desert dunes surrounding Marrakech served as her inspiration, and when it came to shooting the music video for her latest single Yallah, ABIR made it a point to hire an all-Arab team in Morocco, explaining that it made sense to keep the entire production as genuine and authentic as possible.
Two years have passed since her breakout album Mint, and ABIR’s lyrical journey to self-discovery in Heat has been impressive to witness. Together with Grammy Award-winning producer Mick Schultz (known for his work with Rihanna and Young Thug), the album is a powerful manifestation of universal girl power. “In all of my songs, I aim to push the narrative,” she tells Bazaar.
Here, ABIR shares her personal story of growing up as a multi-cultured woman, and explains what we can do to better understand one another…
Harper’s Bazaar Arabia (HBA): Congratulations on your new album. How does it feel for it to finally be out?
ABIR (A): Amazing! It feels like I’ve been hoarding all this new music since we created it. Now, after a year or so, releasing it feels very freeing. On my last album I was such a different person when it was released. I feel like Heat is just me — now, and maybe forever. I’ll keep evolving but for now, it’s a really strong foundation of who I am as a 26-year-old woman in 2020.
HBA: Your music has a very unique sound. How would you describe it and how it fits in the industry today?
A: When my producer, Mick Schultz, and I started working on my vision, I really wanted to bring my Arab culture into pop music. We were throwing around the term ‘Arab pop,’ and so we decided that’s what we’re making.
HBA: What’s changed between now and when you recorded your last debut album, Mint?
A: In December 2018, a couple of months after Mint came out, I had an epiphany… ‘be who you are, 100 per cent. Try to really trust yourself and see what comes of it’. It felt like a long journey of self-discovery. It felt like I had to be okay with my identity and who I am — and put that into my music, 100 per cent unfiltered. That’s the huge difference between Mint and Heat, because my first album was just about creating songs that were fun, but this one required me to dig deeper, figure out who I am and put myself in a vulnerable position in front of everybody. It’s quite a difference.
HBA: Please can you tell us about the inspiration behind Heat?
A: I was inspired by the general idea of combustion; challenging the idea that you can only be one thing and not the other. But I am many things and I want them all to co-exist. Heat is about that in general. When I was uninspired, I switched on the television. Sometimes I’d find desert landscapes or a time-lapse of a sunset, or animals… anything I could do to get the vibe of where I was trying to be. Every time, I would transport myself to somewhere hot, like Morocco. The room would turn red from the imagery on the television.
HBA: What is the song ‘Yallah’ about?
A: I’ve heard ‘yallah’ all my life and thought it would be cool to bring it into the English vocabulary. When I started writing it, it was about interfaith/interracial relationships that I’ve experienced, but as I kept going, I saw that I was writing a song for all marginalised people; individuals who go against the grain and people who defy what is expected of them. It was really a message to say, ‘don’t care about what people think and don’t let other people try to define who you are. Live your life the way you want and let’s keep rising’.
HBA: What was shooting the music video for Yallah like? Can you tell us about the experience?
A: We shot both my singles in Morocco — not just because it’s a beautiful setting, but because it was a homecoming for me. This project was about sharing who I am, bringing my culture to the music. I wanted to do the same thing for the visuals. I worked with an all-Arab creative team — the director, the creative director, the art director, right down to the local producers. We shot right outside of Marrakech, in some parts of the Agafay desert. It was just so magical, everywhere we looked there were beautiful landscapes. As an artist, it was amazing to come back not just to see family, but as a working class woman shooting visuals for a record that means so much to me.
HBA: Your hair in the music video was epic. How long did it take to get ready?
A: I worked with Ilham Mestour, a Moroccan hair stylist. It actually took her very little time to do it on set, but it was so heavy! She braided so quickly and when we were finished, I didn’t want to take it off. It made me feel very powerful.
HBA: Can you tell us how you stay so connected to your Arab roots?
A: Growing up, my parents did a great job to ensure my sisters and I were connected to Morocco in every sense. We would eat Moroccan food, we would listen to Moroccan music, and we would celebrate all the holidays they would celebrate. As I got older, I realised that it was no longer my parents’ responsibility to make me feel connected to the culture, so I started digging and doing my own research. I ended up showing my family things they didn’t even know about Morocco.
HBA: With everything going on in the world right now, what does it mean to you to be an Arab-American in the US?
A: I think we’re starting to look under the rug and see what we’ve swept under it throughout the past hundreds of years. I constantly try to learn about what’s going on when it comes to discrimination and racism here in America. I’ve made it my responsibility to understand. I’m not a voice of authority, but the best thing I can do is educate myself. There’s not just one problem, there’s many. We owe it to ourselves to know what’s going on and to fight for the right things.
HBA: How do you define yourself as an Arab-American woman?
A: Growing up in the US, I had a different perspective than someone who grew up in Brazil, for instance. There’s a lot of Lebanese in Brazil and so an Arab-Brazilian is going to have a different experience than an Arab-American experience. I describe myself as someone who is comfortable in their own skin, and I’m very happy to be Arab, very happy to be Moroccan and very happy to be Muslim. All those things define who I am, but at the same time they don’t make every choice for me. I’m still human at the end of the day. I live my life the way I want and won’t let anyone try to define me.
To listen to Heat visit abirmusic.com