MC Abdul

Gaza's youngest rap voice — a teenager writing peace into bars the rest of the world can't stop listening to.

MC Abdul — born Abdulrahman Al-Shantti, September 14, 2008 — grew up in Gaza as the eldest of five, navigating life under siege while raising younger siblings. He was born during the 2008 war; by the time he turned thirteen he had already lived through four major bombardments on his homeland. He is entirely self-taught. He learned English from YouTube and taught himself to rap off his phone after hearing Eminem's "Not Afraid" at age five.

He went viral in August 2020 on Instagram — an eleven-year-old covering American rap classics with a Gaza flag behind him. By May 2021 his debut single "Shouting at the Wall" pulled more than six million views, written in response to the violence in Sheikh Jarrah. EMPIRE — the label founded by Palestinian-American executive Ghazi Shami — signed him soon after. In December 2022 he played his first-ever concert at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar. In 2024 he featured on Saint Levant's "Deira," which hit #1 on the Lebanese charts and crossed 2.5 million Spotify streams.

At the start of the 2023 war MC Abdul was in Los Angeles while his family remained in Gaza — a separation he writes about directly, without metaphor. Fat Joe, DJ Khaled, and Bella Hadid have publicly backed his work. He describes the microphone as "the only escape possible." His message, in his own words: "I don't understand what politics is — the thing I'm trying to say is that I want the children of the world to live in peace and harmony, and I want to be the voice of the children in Palestine." His Saturday set at OC MENA is one of the most important bookings of the weekend.