Soulja Is Taking Sudan's Sound Global, No Translation Needed

Every month, OkayAfrica spotlights an exceptional African artist shaping African music and culture. From rising stars shaping new sounds to established artists driving culture forward, this series gives us a stage to celebrate incredible, ingenious African artistry.

To Sudanese audiences both in the diaspora and at home, Soulja needs no introduction: he’s our most beloved contemporary musician. 

I first heard his music in January 2024, when he released his debut album Deja Vu and immediately claimed his spot as my most listened-to artist of the year. I was late; by then, people had already been listening to him for four years.

Ever since he stepped into the limelight in 2020, Soulja hasn’t slowed down. He took over the rap scene, then went on to explore other Sudanese traditions,  Afrobeats and amapiano without losing his signature sound, managing to tread the thin line between giving his fans what they want and enticing them to follow him into uncharted territory.

Soulja is OkayAfrica’s Artist of the Month for October, just in time to jump on his train heading from Sudan to the world. 

In Tune With His Generation

Soulja debuted with “Marrakech” in 2020, emerging in a wave of expression and art amid the Sudanese revolution. By 2021, he was hailed as Sudan’s most promising new talent. By 2024, Yung named him “The Humble King of Sudanese Rap.” Artists who rise through the ranks this quickly often divide public opinion, but Soulja’s beloved throughout the generations; he’s perhaps even the first rapper who will be heard in a Sudanese auntie’s living room. 

Soulja does not take this praise for granted. “It’s a responsibility, and I want to have a positive impact on the community,” he tells OkayAfrica in an exclusive conversation. “At the same time, I don’t want it to change my identity or limit me.”

“Soulja genuinely sounds like he's making music he loves,” adds  NYC-based DJ Love Bonez, who’s been following the rapper’s evolution since 2023.

“He uses a lot of Sudanese slang and keeps his wordplay simple. That’s why he resonates with a big audience, because they live those kinds of words on a daily basis,” says filmmaker Brahim Snoopy, who has known Soulja since he first started releasing music.

“[My first time listening to Soulja,] I remember thinking that his way of writing was light-hearted but showed a lot of confidence, and that he had a unique cadence,” remembers fellow musician Sammany Hajo. ”I think his music resonates for a lot of reasons: relatability, dialect, catchy hooks and punchlines, and cadence.”

“Back in the day, rap songs were [recorded] underground with minimal equipment,” says Snoopy. “Soulja took music to a whole new level of professionalism and studio quality, but also collaborated with local artists, bridging rap and Sudanese tarab.”

Whenever Love Bonez features Soulja in her sets, people stop and say, “Wait, this isn’t even in English.” “Music is a universal language, but crossing cultural and linguistic barriers is still genuinely hard for artists to pull off, and Soulja's done it while staying completely rooted in his Sudanese identity,” she says. “The music slaps worldwide without him diluting anything to get there.”

0 Views

He recently released 0 Views, a four-track conceptual project with an accompanying short film directed by The Aymen. On “INTRO,” Soulja gets vulnerable about depression, isolation, and the challenges young people face in life. “My defense mechanism to this sadness is sarcasm, so track two, ‘DAWAMA,’ is when you realize that things will have to be okay,” Soulja tells OkayAfrica with a smirk. 

Track three, “LOOK LOOK,” is all about braggadocio, because he managed to somewhat get through the hardships. He’s feeling himself again and ends his journey at “JAWAB,” having reached a place where he’s able to exit the negative spirals in his mind.

Soulja doesn’t appear in the short film for his EP. Instead, a woman (Dina Manan) lives through the emotions carried on the tracks, trapped in her thoughts until she finally manages to break out. He deliberately chose to visualize the story through another person, because he knows that while his experiences are personal, they’re not unique. 

“[Sudanese youth] didn’t have the right to ask questions before, but now everyone is trying to explore who they are and what they want,” Soulja says. “I think a lot of people relate to this journey.” 

Sudan’s Ambassador Through Music

While 0 Views tackles depression and isolation that are inevitably linked to the crisis that has been unfolding in Sudan, Soulja doesn’t want his art to only revolve around the worst that Sudan has to offer. “I don’t want people to see our music as something they have to support because of the war,” he says. “I’m trying to push the Sudanese sound to become the next amapiano. Sudan is very big, and we have lots of different cultures, music, and even languages inside the country.” 

The rapper is one of many young Sudanese artists researching their country's traditions, overcoming a disconnect that marked past decades and previous generations. “The world still doesn’t know anything about Sudanese music, because we don’t even know it all,” he says.

Growing up across Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Egypt, Soulja loved certain Sudanese genres like Zanig and eventually began educating himself about them at university, where he studied Engineering at his parents' request. “It enchanted me, it enchanted me completely,” he remembers. “So I wanted to become the ambassador of our country through music.” 

Hajo, Snoopy and Love Bonez, along with many others OkayAfrica has interviewed over the years, agree that Soulja represents the Sudanese music scene well. 

Like many in his generation, he merges his culture’s traditional sounds with global genres. Unlike many, his songs don’t tip into the superficial or expected. This is partly because he has a close circle of friends, family, and collaborators who advise him with absolute honesty (“I throw out 80 percent of my demos, and I treat my mother, [a poet,] like a call center”) and partly because he has a strategy of gradually introducing his Sudanese audience to new sounds, always looking both inward and outward. 

People tend to stick to what they love. From Jay-Z to Wegz, rap fans resist their favorite artists changing their sound. Soulja has created a rhythm that works both for his art practice and his fans. After releasing singles like “Dayman” and “15 Hikaya” all year, he surprised his listeners with 0 Views, giving them “the old Soulja” they’d been asking for. 

“He understands his audience,” says Riyad Sansoul of Empire WANA, who works closely with Soulja. “He does something new or more commercial, then returns to his core Sudanese fans, grabs them and goes again to wherever he’s moving to next.” “Don’t give them what they want every time,” says Soulja with a grin. 

From the region to the diaspora, his approach is working. Soulja is the man of the moment, a name young Sudanese people mention with pride. “I like that he raps exclusively in Sudanese Arabic regardless of how the music sounds or who he collaborates with,” says Hajo. “I feel like this formula of one constant amidst a number of variables is part of what makes him Soulja.”

“He doesn't sound like a Sudanese artist trying to sound American; he sounds like a Sudanese artist who's crossed boundaries on his own terms,” Love Bonez agrees. 

Ultimately, much of his success seems to come from his willingness to be vulnerable and genuine, which speaks to young Sudanese audiences more than the dying breed of braggadocio rap that has nothing to do with their daily lives. Wherever Soulja goes, he leaves a good impression, and in the three years I’ve been a fan, I've yet to meet anyone who doesn’t like him. 

“Whether you know Soulja personally or not, you can tell that he is serious about his craft,” says Hajo. “His work ethic and consistency are inspiring, to say the least. I draw a lot of inspiration from seeing other Sudanese artists succeed. It motivates me and puts me in a good headspace to create. So, in a way, his success is our success.”