Moroccan Superstar ElGrandeToto Is Not a Villain, but His Alter Ego Is

Moroccan rapper ElGrandeToto lives next to a school. When he sees the kids going to and from class, he spots his alter ego sewn onto their backpacks: SALGOAT, the black hairy monster with red eyes, sharp teeth, and a spliff in his mouth. 

“This persona is the one handling all the stuff I wouldn’t do,” Toto tells OkayAfrica. “He’s the voice of the person with no voice. He’s the image of the person with no image. He represents your darkest version—terrifying, but good.”

SALGOAT was created by French photographer Frankie Allio as the visual for Toto’s last mixtape of the same name. Toto’s initial idea had been to show different versions of himself—one studying, one selling weed, one cooking coke, one rapping—but instead Allio came up with this Basquiat-inspired cartoon.

“She was just trolling me, but I kept thinking about it. I added the teeth, red eyes, and joint and put it on the cover. It all started as a joke,” he remembers. “But this joke became like a fucking symbol. SALGOAT is fucking vigilante. A Moroccan villain.” 

On June 5, Toto released SALGOAT Vol. 2, a follow-up mixtape that continues to grow this persona and what it means to people. “It’s a way to get back to the source,” he says. “I’ve been doing commercial stuff for a long time, and I’ve just been sick of it for a moment. I just wanted to get back to the music I made when I started.”

In his previous work, Toto intentionally collaborated with international musicians to prove that a Moroccan could do so for free.  He has worked with CKay, Ayra Starr, Hamza, Farid Bang, and French Montana, amongst others. “I wanted to normalize the fact that you could have great artists on your record even if you come from Morocco,” he says. 

Having cemented his position as one of Morocco’s greatest rappers and the #1 artist in Morocco and the MENA region on Spotify for five consecutive years, he now changes course and turns his attention to the musicians in his home country. The features on SALGOAT Vol. 2 include Draganov, Gello 4031, Shaw, and Najm, amongst several other Moroccan musicians. “I’m like the display window of the Moroccan rap scene,” says Toto. “So maybe it’s the right moment to introduce the Moroccan scene to the world.”

But the two tracks that make up the mixtape’s throughline, “Liberté” and “Shevchenko,” are all his. “‘Liberté’ gave me the conduct of wire,” he says. “And ‘Shevchenko’ is the best delivery I had on the whole mixtape when it comes to the flows and lyrics.”

Neither of these songs was written before the recording session; “Liberté” came to him at that moment. “I remember saying ‘pull up’ because I wanted to hear the song, and then I stopped and said ‘that’s good! Put me on,’” he says and laughs. For “Shevchenko,” Toto had written the first verse and went on to freestyle the second. The track is named after the Ukrainian football star, Andriy Shevchenko.

The mixtape sounds like you’d expect it to, given the persona of SALGOAT. It’s a return to Toto’s original love for rap, dark and trappy. “I didn’t give a fuck about what I recorded when I recorded the whole thing,” he says, meaning that much of the lyrics just came out in the moment, no previous writing needed. 

But there’s a different side to Toto, one that he’s growing into as he lives life as a father and, whether he likes it or not, a role model. “I believe that everyone is responsible for himself. I have people on my team who’ve never smoked a spliff,” he says. “They didn’t get influenced by me.” 

However, he does admit to changing his mind about “not being that guy that takes on responsibility.” “I was young and dumb when I started, you know?” He laughs. “I wasn’t aware of my impact. When I started inking myself, suddenly the whole hood got tatted. It showed that you can have tattoos and get a job.” 

His parents would gently nudge him to lessen the “bad words” and smoke less, even though they loved his music. “With some growing up and having a kid, that’s when I finally understood what many people were saying to me,” he says and laughs again. “It’s a messy situation. When it comes to influence, I get messy. But I started to get the point about how much music can impact lives.” 

Coming to terms with his impact is not only about aging but also about finding enough stillness to reflect. Since he blew up at 20, Toto has only taken three breaks: when his mother passed away, when his son was born, and when he lived in Dakar. 

“In Dakar, I was away from cameras and infamous, because I had a fight on the first day, so people weren’t fucking me a lot,” he says. “I went fishing, I went to the mosque with people. That’s when I started thinking about it.” 

He credits his team for keeping him grounded and reminding him not to act like the big rapper he is. And no matter how successful he is yet to become, Toto is always striving for more. “Until I do Coachella, nothing will ever be enough,” he says. “Even after that, there isn’t a final accomplishment in hip hop. I think I’ll still be rapping until I’m 50 and, who knows, maybe get into beef with my son.” 

At the point of this conversation, SALGOAT (Vol. 2) is about to drop in a few hours, and Toto has already begun working on his third album. Where does that drive come from? “The love of hip hop,” he says. “I’m really passionate about hip hop. Besides family, that’s all I have.” 

Whenever he has some time in Casablanca, Toto returns to Place Rachidi, also known as Nevada, lights a spliff in his car, and watches people breakdance and skate. “The whole culture is in my blood,” he says. “That’s what keeps me alive.”