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BAHRAINI rap sensation Flipperachi aka Hussam Aseem is dropping beats alongside US basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal in the rap video What Can’t We Do, for an Abu Dhabi-based tourism campaign released this week.
The film has attracted more than 3,701,128 views in 24 hours, its ‘West Coast’, ‘grime’ beats instantly resonating with fans globally.
“It was a great experience producing the instrumental and the words, and we worked on making it entertaining for the audience,” Flipperachi told GulfWeekly.
“It took us roughly a week to 10 days, finetuning,” the 37-year-old creative talent added.
“We visualised Shaq (Shaquille) while writing the chorus and went back and forth with him to make it something he would also be interested in.”
The campaign, which promotes Yas Island in Abu Dhabi as the ‘face of entertainment’, features the former NBA superstar dropping beats with Flipperachi by his side.
The 90-second film has been shot across the island’s most iconic attractions with the message ‘on Yas Island, the impossible becomes possible’ – a mantra that also defines the illustrious career of the region’s most sought after hiphop artist.
A self-taught rapper, Flipperachi would spend time writing poetry while most of his peers at school were revising for tests. He completed his education well but was drawn to pursue a career in music at a time when rap wasn’t very popular in Bahrain – it was more of a Western concept.
“I knew people who rapped and learned from them. I observed how famous rappers at the time broke down their rap, their punchlines and semantics. It was challenging but I persisted – consistency is key,” he noted.
The Hamad Town resident revealed that working on What Can’t We Do brought back memories of the time he started his musical career.
“The West Coast, grime beat took me back to the beginning. In the start, my style used to be a lot like this,” he said, adding that he, along with his team at Outlaw Productions – top regional music production label founded by Bahraini creative DJ Outlaw in 2003 – decided on this style so the campaign would resonate with a wider audience.
Even though the song has Western rap touches, it still embodies the essence of Flipperachi, who believes that ‘rap is an expression of oneself’, an advice he received from DMC – American rapper Darryl McDaniels – many years ago, during his visit to Bahrain.
A versatile rapper, Flipperachi also plays basketball and almost pursued the sport as a career.
“I am a good player and was close to being on the national team,” he claimed.
Eventually, the artist decided in favour of music and spent a long time developing his sound and brand.
In 2008, he was signed by Outlaw Productions, which took his career to the next level. Some of his biggest hits include Ee Laa, Shino AlKalam Hatha, Shoofha, and most recently, Nayda.
Not one to rest on his laurels, the hiphop sensation, who has more than 161,000 fans on Instagram and whose songs have garnered millions of views, is determined to continue working on his craft and shine a bright spotlight on Bahraini talent and music.
