Syrian rapper and producer Al Darwish, looked upon as a pillar of the Arab hip-hop community, has been making music for almost two decades. Darwish recently turned his attention to blockchain-based music nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to sell and market his music. As a result, he released the first-ever Arab rap NFT track in the Middle East and North Africa region. 

Darwish was introduced to NFTs by a friend and fellow rapper about six months ago. After researching the market, he chose Nifty Souq, an NFT platform launched in 2021 by Palestinian entrepreneur Nabil Al-Sayed, to distribute 23 copies of his track “Ana.” “NFTs give us leeway to be our own artists and a huge margin of independence,” Darwish said. “It’s important for people who work in the Arab music scene to push forward with NFTs.”  

Darwish currently lives in Germany. Once he discovered how selling NFTs could potentially compensate artists, particularly without an intermediary like a record label or a streaming platform, he decided to enter the NFT space. “I started doing music almost 20 years ago, searching for independence. I have turned down major record labels and major offers for distribution because I believe we are creating a huge market and should own our royalties. In 15 years, we will be the pioneers who started Arabic hip-hop.” 

Sayed's goal with Nifty Souq was to bring the NFT marketplace to the MENA region. He believes that NFTs provide a more efficient alternative to monetizing artists' work using blockchain technology. NFTs utilize smart contracts, which refer to programming code in the blockchain. When creating the smart contract, artists set specific rules on a number of items, including how much royalties they can receive for every transaction. When a person "mints" an NFT, a network of computers carries out the agreed-upon actions and triggers the next step in the smart contract.