More than four years ago, PAM cited Yasmine Dubois’ work to describe the Nyokô Bokbaë trio. The three rockers in skirts quoted what was to become Ysamine’s future/former name, Lafawndah. “I remember reading that reference at the time, I thought it was cute,” confides the young artist, who is now treading a new path under the moniker KUKII. It’s a new creative envelope for a rebirth in the belly of Cairo, the city of her origins: “Sometimes, when I have to explain these choices, this change of name, of city, I’ve noticed that, in the end, a lot of rationality is expected of me. But that’s not what my life is about,” asserts KUKII.
KUKII, born to an Egyptian-Iranian family, grew up between Teheran and the French capital. Since 2015, under her first creative alter ego – Lafawndah – the French artist carved out a place for herself in the musical avant-garde with a series of natural successes: signing to Warp, collaborations with Midori Takada, Jeff Mills and Kelela, plus performances at the Théâtre du Châtelet, the Fondation Cartier, and the Venice Biennale.
A renaissance in the heart of Cairo
Her discovery of Cairo, her father’s hometown, dates back to this hypnotic Boiler Room performance in 2016: “After that concert, I kept going back to Cairo, again and again. And again. Through music, I was able to access a part of my life that intimidated me. And then, thanks to music, I found myself in a situation, let’s say, of comfort with part of my family.”
And since? “Many, many things have happened since I moved here last year. My relationship with spirituality, with music, with family… There’s something of a landing in this whole experience. But as you can see, there’s nothing rational about it.”
KUKII’s musical entry point into Cairo was the uncontrollable mahraganat, an incendiary Shaabi-street rap that sounded off the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. The musician discovered it in Situ, alongside Sadat, the uncontested godfather of the genre: “I didn’t speak Arabic at the time, and he didn’t speak English at all, so our communication was entirely musical. One of the things we did was ride cabs at night, screaming Young Thug!” Yasmine recalls. “Mahraganat overwhelmed me. This music is about disobedience. This music, although it obviously contains a lot of poetry, also shows us how to get rid of the idea of beauty and throw ourselves into something hyper raw. In Mahraganat, the use of the voice is very punk.”
Rare Baby: a visceral manifesto
It’s no coincidence that the vocals on Rare Baby, KUKII’s brand new six-track EP, are stuffed to the gills with a mahraganat influenced punk and grunge. During the recording of this EP, released a month ago, the musician made it a rule to drop the vocals for each track in a single day: “In Western music, female vocals are always expected to be beautiful, smooth and seductive. But I’m not. I listen to raï, traditional Mauritanian music, Tuareg or Japanese songs. I listen to very oral music, which isn’t meant to be recorded.”
In Cairo: “people sing loudly, often in groups, together. The relationship with the voice is much more visceral. It was this immediacy, this live energy, that I sought out in the studio for Rare Baby. And you know, in the end, I also grew up listening to the voices of depressed white men. Like Kurt Cobain or Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, among others. And that had a profound effect on me. The feeling of disobedience, of threat, of grumbling, that was missing at the time, I think. This EP is an ode to those feelings, a little adolescent admittedly, but salvific, necessary, and which I find a little lost in 2025.”
Raw, urgent, and tailor-made for the stage… KUKII’s opus is like a molotof cocktail in the hands of a revolutionary. Accompanied in the studio by producer Cécile Believe, who has worked with Austra, oklou, Kanye West and the late Sophie, the sound of Rare Baby is filled with solid drive. And instinctive: “I know myself now, and I know I can be a maximalist. In music, it’s always easier to be talkative. So I wanted to make an album of bones. An album of voice and bones. Well, I don’t think I succeeded. It’s not an album of bones. But there was that intention.”
An intention likely disrupted by the musical profusion that reigns in Cairo: “a day spent walking the streets of the city, from sunrise to sunset, is a musical exploration of ten centuries of music that clash and intermingle. The rhythmic richness, the wealth of genres, the temporalities of Cairo are infinite, no need for Spotify here.”
It’s a look into the city’s interior that nourishes many Egyptian artists and has given rise to a number of scenes here: “Sometimes we have to be wary of the importance we attach to looking outwards. Many of the Egyptian musicians and artists I work with have a very deep relationship with their own musical history. And rightly so. Do they really need anything else? Part of today’s Egyptian scene is extremely educated and enlightened about its heritage, whether popular or traditional. It’s fascinating, this attraction to what’s inside. Some of them even get together regularly to think about the future of their own scene. I love these creative dynamics. This ability to feed from within, while taking care of one’s own projections and future.”
Long live the Cairo scene, and KUKII, whose new six-track album Rare Baby is out now.
