There’s ‘something’ about Nadine El Roubi - something you just can’t put your finger on. We can talk about her effortless navigation of R&B, hip-hop, neo-soul and other adjacent styles of music. We can talk about her infectious charisma, or her incredible appetite for music as both artist and listener. It’s a combination of all of these things, though, alongside a heavy helping of some kind of intangible x-factor that come together to shape and inform one of the region’s most unique voices.
Having been raised in the US and spent time in the UK, it would be easy for Nadine to have left behind her Sudanese roots. But with a bibliography brimming with reflections of her life, her heritage remains both an inspiration for and a deep-rooted component within her music. In fact, she revels in what she sees as an exciting Sudanese music scene, championing it at every given opportunity - and she’s become quite the fan of the Egyptian scene, too, so much so that she has spent most of 2021 exploring the country from a base in Cairo.
Followers of SceneNoise will understand that we’re big fans of what Nadine is all about. We finally got the chance to sit down for an interview that’s been years in-the-making, as she opens up about everything from her humble beginnings of music and her writing process, to who her ultimate collaboration partner would be on Egypt’s rap scene. Spoiler: his name begins with ‘M’ and ends with ‘Pablo’.
