02.07.2026
A conversation with Billy TSTRK
By
It feels like your work often sits between raw but refined sound design, distortion, and more fragmented sounds. How do you approach making music?
I don’t really think about it. It’s more like intuitive architecture. I know I’m moving toward something very specific, and it reveals itself once I get there.
My debut LP, 7ASHARA, was designed in that same spirit ; contradictions, not chapters. I tend to obsess over certain textures, patterns, or aesthetic ideas and keep revisiting them across different works. Sometimes that creates a feeling of déjà vu, like a memory from a dream you’re not sure actually happened.
What keeps us going is the support and enthusiasm we’ve received from people connecting with the music. Building something from the ground up with limited resources has only made us more committed to growing the scene and seeing where it can go with our own infrastructure.
For listeners who don’t speak Arabic, a lot of the communication seems to happen through melody and emotion. What do you hope still comes through in that translation?
I like to think the language barrier is a detail. Our work is full of regional references it’s true, but it’s also built on things everyone understands: love, heartbreak, lust, boredom, ego, youth. I can’t change the way I was raised to speak. The details are specific to my life, to Beirut and the Arab world, but the emotions aren’t.
Anyone curious enough can understand what I’m doing. Music isn't some cultural puzzle that only locals can solve. The mystical part of it belong
Thomas Hell - interviewer & editor
It feels like your work often sits between raw but refined sound design, distortion, and more fragmented sounds. How do you approach making music?
I don’t really think about it. It’s more like intuitive architecture. I know I’m moving toward something very specific, and it reveals itself once I get there.
My debut LP, 7ASHARA, was designed in that same spirit ; contradictions, not chapters. I tend to obsess over certain textures, patterns, or aesthetic ideas and keep revisiting them across different works. Sometimes that creates a feeling of déjà vu, like a memory from a dream you’re not sure actually happened.
What keeps us going is the support and enthusiasm we’ve received from people connecting with the music. Building something from the ground up with limited resources has only made us more committed to growing the scene and seeing where it can go with our own infrastructure.
For listeners who don’t speak Arabic, a lot of the communication seems to happen through melody and emotion. What do you hope still comes through in that translation?
I like to think the language barrier is a detail. Our work is full of regional references it’s true, but it’s also built on things everyone understands: love, heartbreak, lust, boredom, ego, youth. I can’t change the way I was raised to speak. The details are specific to my life, to Beirut and the Arab world, but the emotions aren’t.
Anyone curious enough can understand what I’m doing. Music isn't some cultural puzzle that only locals can solve. The mystical part of it belong
What role has M7DH0N played in shaping your practice, and what does working collectively make possible for you?
M7DH0N is more than a collective to us, it’s an independent, unfiltered movement within Arabic hip-hop that we’ve built from the ground up. It gave us something more valuable than resources: a shared worldview and a mission. We exchange influences, ideas, and opportunities, but we also keep each other honest.
Through 7ASHARA amongst other projects M7DHON blends DIY rap aesthetics with punk sensibilities, we’ve been able to push a fast, distorted, club-oriented sound that sits between trap, heavy electronics, and fragmented vocal styles. Whether it’s me, WAJA33, or BEIRUTCLUBMAFIA, we’re all shaping a space where sonic fragmentation becomes emotional honesty and an ode to our city.
At this point, every one affiliated with M7DH0N is family. We’ve been through everything together and that bond is what keeps it real. When people tag it, support it, or even tattoo our logo, it drives us to continue pushing.
Looking
at your wider context, what excites you most about the music scene around you
right now?
What excites me is doing all of this from the Arab world while the internet keeps pretending geography doesn't matter.
For a long time, alternative music from this region was expected to imitate somebody else's reference points. Now we're becoming the reference point ourselves. That's the ambition.
The goal isn't to participate. The goal is to leave a mark large enough that people have to acknowledge it. And in that practice lies a new found freedom.
What excites me is doing all of this from the Arab world while the internet keeps pretending geography doesn't matter.
For a long time, alternative music from this region was expected to imitate somebody else's reference points. Now we're becoming the reference point ourselves. That's the ambition.
The goal isn't to participate. The goal is to leave a mark large enough that people have to acknowledge it. And in that practice lies a new found freedom.