naarfr.com presents itself as a postcultural collective built around a clear editorial premise: artists should not be placed in a hierarchy determined by geography, market power, or the international visibility of their home countries. In its introductory statement, published on February 12, 2018, the project described its purpose as an attempt to counter the effects of uneven competition among artists worldwide. The underlying position was concise: “All cultures are equal.”
That statement provides the most useful lens for reading the site. Rather than treating Moroccan, European, and North American cultural production as separate categories, naarfr.com placed artists from these contexts within the same editorial frame. Its archive moved from Moroccan rap to American independent music, from contemporary visual art to photography concerned with migration and identity. The result was not a conventional music magazine organized around one genre, nor a national arts publication limited by borders. It was a selective collection of interviews and profiles linked by questions of artistic independence, cultural movement, and representation.
The term “postcultural” is significant to that approach. On the site, it did not mean that cultural background had become irrelevant. Several featured artists were discussed precisely through their relationships with nationality, migration, language, or inherited identity. Instead, the editorial model resisted the assumption that one cultural center should define the value of work made elsewhere. Moroccan artists appeared alongside musicians with established recognition in Western independent culture, without being presented merely as regional curiosities.
The publication’s initial group of articles, dated February 11 and 12, 2018, established that broad range. Profiles covered Albert Hammond Jr, Christopher Owens, Jaakko Eino Kalevi, and The Garden, while another article focused on New York-based Moroccan artist Meriem Bennani. A welcome post then stated the collective’s intentions. Taken together, these early entries functioned as an editorial declaration through practice: internationally familiar musicians and a Moroccan contemporary artist occupied the same developing archive.
Moroccan artists became a central part of the project, particularly through interviews with figures working in rap, visual art, and photography. The coverage did not reduce their work to national identity alone. Instead, it examined how individual artists built distinct aesthetics while operating within cultural conditions that were local, international, and increasingly shaped by the internet.
The February 12, 2018 conversation with Meriem Bennani is an early example. Bennani, a Moroccan artist based in New York, spoke with the publication while preparing or participating in exhibitions in Dubai and in her adopted city. The article addressed her work and the women represented in it, placing her artistic practice across several locations rather than assigning it to a single national scene. Her presence in the archive also widened the site’s scope beyond recorded music and performance.
On April 20, 2018, naarfr.com published an interview with Shayfeen, the Moroccan rap duo formed by Shobee and Small X. The introduction identified the group as an essential presence in Moroccan rap and emphasized the open-minded, forward-looking approach that had distinguished its members from an early stage. The profile treated the duo as active participants in contemporary rap culture, not simply as a local equivalent of artists working in larger music industries.
A later feature, dated September 17, 2018, turned to Issam. The site characterized him as an independent-minded figure in Moroccan trap whose songs and videos followed a taste for art-oriented imagery. Calling him a “child of internet” pointed to an important dimension of the scene documented by the publication. Artists such as Issam could draw from global visual and musical languages while creating work rooted in their own surroundings. Digital circulation complicated the old division between a supposed cultural center and its peripheries.
This focus continued beyond editorial interviews. On February 27, 2019, the collective announced the SAFAR Tour, a series of concerts planned for European countries with Moroccan rap acts Shayfeen and Madd as headliners. That announcement showed the project operating not only as a publisher but also as a platform connected to live presentation. The tour concept translated its cross-border editorial position into a physical circuit, bringing major voices from Moroccan rap to European stages.
The international side of the archive helps clarify why the Moroccan coverage was distinctive. naarfr.com did not build a separate section in which artists from Morocco were isolated from a presumed mainstream. Its index instead moved directly between different scenes. A reader could encounter Shayfeen near a feature on French rapper Laylow, Issam near American singer and songwriter Weyes Blood, or Meriem Bennani alongside musicians associated with American and European independent culture.
The archive at www.naarfr.com/ records that editorial sequence through dated entries, short introductions, and interviews that foreground the working identities of the subjects rather than sorting them into rigid cultural tiers. The method was straightforward: introduce the artist through a specific project or moment, then use conversation to reveal the experiences, references, and decisions behind the work.
Albert Hammond Jr was among the musicians featured when the site launched. Known as a member of The Strokes as well as a solo artist, he discussed an improvised trip to Morocco, ideas for a possible band movie, and his process for interpreting songs by other performers. The Moroccan travel anecdote gave the interview a point of contact with the publication’s wider geographic interests, but the profile remained centered on Hammond’s development and creative process.
Christopher Owens was presented through several elements of his public identity: unconventional songwriting, modeling work for Hedi Slimane and Yves Saint Laurent, and the iconic status he had acquired among listeners of 2010s independent music. By bringing these strands together, the introduction treated music, fashion, and image-making as connected parts of an artist’s career. The Finnish musician Jaakko Eino Kalevi appeared in another launch-period interview, discussing his album and offering anecdotes from his experience as a performer. The Garden, the twin duo known for energetic performances, recording, and modeling, completed another part of that early music coverage.
On March 23, 2018, the publication featured Moses Sumney shortly after his brief appearance at the Academy Awards alongside Sufjan Stevens. The article moved beyond that highly visible moment to address Sumney’s childhood between cultures and the extended process behind his music. That emphasis was consistent with the collective’s interest in artists whose lives and work could not be adequately summarized through a single location or category.
The April 27 profile of Laylow shifted attention to French rap. At that point, the artist had established a distinctive creative universe through the records Mercy and Digitalova. naarfr.com framed him as an original voice in the French scene and interviewed him while that artistic identity was still taking shape publicly. Including Laylow between the Shayfeen and Issam features also reflected the site’s attention to different Francophone rap contexts without treating them as interchangeable.
Natalie Mering, who performs as Weyes Blood, was featured on October 1, 2018. The article identified her as the artist behind the acclaimed Front Row Seat to Earth and looked beyond the beauty of her music and stage presentation toward the spiritual thinking associated with her practice. As with other interviews in the archive, the subject was introduced through recognizable work before the focus moved toward the ideas underlying it.
The November 6, 2018 profile of Karim El Maktafi offers one of the clearest examples of the project’s interest in identity. El Maktafi was introduced as a Moroccan-Italian photographer seeking a balance between two equally strong sides of his background. The interview connected that search to the experience of being part of a second generation and to his first project, Hayati. It also suggested that these concerns might continue through his later work.
That feature is important because it shows the distinction between acknowledging culture and imposing a cultural label. El Maktafi’s Moroccan and Italian identities were not incidental biographical details; they were central to the questions in his photography. Yet the profile described identity as a process of inquiry rather than a fixed explanation. His work became a way to examine what belonging to a second generation means when family history, present surroundings, and personal perspective do not fit neatly within one national story.
A similar pattern can be seen across the archive. Moses Sumney’s childhood between cultures, Bennani’s position between Morocco and New York, and the European presentation of Moroccan rappers through the SAFAR Tour all involved movement across geographic or social boundaries. Even when an interview was not primarily about migration, the publication often selected artists who had constructed their own space between established scenes, genres, or professional roles.
The project’s interviews also preserved a particular cultural moment. Its dated index runs from the cluster of launch articles in February 2018 through the SAFAR Tour announcement in February 2019. During that period, Moroccan trap and rap were gaining visibility through online distribution and increasingly ambitious visual production, while independent musicians elsewhere were navigating careers spread across records, live performance, fashion, and digital media. The archive placed those developments in proximity.
That proximity was itself an editorial argument. Instead of claiming that all artists share the same circumstances, naarfr.com acknowledged unequal access to attention and opportunity. Its response was to publish different voices on a common platform and to approach each subject through concrete work: an album, a video, an exhibition, a photographic series, or a tour. The collective’s stated belief in cultural equality therefore appeared not only in its manifesto but also in how its index was assembled.
As an editorial record, naarfr.com is defined by this combination of interviews, concise artist introductions, and cross-border programming. Its subjects included established independent musicians, emerging rap figures, visual artists, and photographers confronting layered identities. The publication did not erase the differences among those careers. It made those differences visible without assuming that international fame, country of origin, or proximity to a dominant market should determine whose work merited serious attention.
