Erotic Rap, With Politics as Subtext

In the clip of “Very Few Friends” that went viral on TikTok last year, Marwan Abdelhamid, who records as Saint Levant, showed up as both a sex symbol and someone who understands that sex symbols are a little ridiculous. A trilingual loverman wearing a white tank top and a rakish mustache, he stares at the camera, rapping with deadpan erotic frankness.

He was trying on a new persona. He grew out his facial hair. His earlier music had relied on Auto-Tune; now he was just talking, and talking dirty.

“It’s taboo to talk about sex in the Arab world,” he said.

Mr. Abdelhamid, 22, lives mostly in Los Angeles now, but he was speaking during a New York trip in which he sat front row at the Coach fashion show and filmed a music video. He was clearly tickled by what has come in the wake of the clip: 13 million views on his TikTok, and 47 million plays on Spotify.

In the months since, Mr. Abdelhamid has learned a lot about the new version of himself and also about fans.

“We gave them names,” he said. “The Hebas are 18 to 24. They probably grew up in the Middle East. Maybe hijabi. She likes Saint Levant because he’s pushing Arab culture, but also because he’s good-looking,” he said. “Then you have the Armaans, who are third-culture kids. They probably speak Urdu — like, Pakistani vibes.

“And then you have the Emilys, who just don’t even know” about his politics, or share his background. “They’re just like, ‘This guy’s hot.’ ”

He chuckled a little bit. “I’m down,” he said. “But that’s not who I’m doing it for.”

Mr. Abdelhamid’s debut solo release, the “From Gaza, With Love” EP, finds ways to speak to these audiences. It is a document of sensual desire, casually hopping from tender R&B to sleazy rock to hopped-up U.K. garage. But amid the erotic frankness are shards of family memoir and diasporic longing.

Mr. Abdelhamid was born in Jerusalem to a French Algerian mother and a Palestinian Serbian father, and spent his early childhood in Gaza before his family moved to Jordan. At school, he spoke English. In the Palestinian refugee camp where he went to play soccer after school, Arabic.

He went to the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he imbibed American culture, joined a fraternity and ultimately got serious about making music. He lived in a house there with Henry Morris, who records as Playyard, and who produced most of “From Gaza, With Love.”

Their first songs, “Jerusalem Freestyle” and “Nirvana in Gaza,” were politically stirring rap tracks that leaned toward the didactic. At around the same time, Mr. Abdelhamid was also beginning to work on an economic development start-up, connecting Palestinian entrepreneurs to those in the diaspora with resources to fund them. In late 2021, he took on the moniker Saint Levant, a nod to a pre-colonial name of his home region (and a play on Saint Laurent). He chose to make politics a subtext, not text.

This loverman era, Mr. Abdelhamid said, is a means to an end. “Not to say that music can’t push culture forward, but my impact will be felt 10 years down the line in economic development,” he said. “My goal, my whole life, is to be the president of Palestine.”