MC Abdul didn’t expect his trip to California to turn into a new life.
Three years of trying to secure a visa finally paid off, and at 15, Abdul was getting his first real opportunity to pursue the career he had imagined from home. When the Palestinian rapper arrived in the United States with his father in 2023, the plan was to record music, perform, make some money, and eventually head back to Gaza.
He never returned.
Now finishing high school in the Bay, Abdul is preparing to release his debut album, Day By Day, Shway Shway, on October 16 through San Francisco-based label Empire. The record covers a lot of ground—probably because the last few years of his life have too.
There’s the excitement of finally making it to America, recording in professional studios, meeting Snoop Dogg and performing at the United Nations. There’s also Gaza, the family he left behind, and the genocide that began weeks after his arrival in the United States. Abdul says 81 members of his extended family have been killed by the Israeli offensive, including his grandmother, cousins, and aunts.
Eventually, his immediate family of seven was able to move to Northern California.
These days, life looks very different.
“There’s a lot of Arabs out here as well, so you know, still kind of reminds me of back home in a certain way,” Abdul tells 48hills.
Still, the Bay Area took some getting used to.
“There’s so many cultures in one country,” he says. “It’s obviously different from growing up in a Muslim country.”
Central to his own experience, the schools are bigger, and boys and girls attend them together. Abdul, who is a high school senior, has found himself living in one of the most culturally mixed regions in the country while trying to build a rap career. Such contrasts run through Day By Day, Shway Shway.
Long before Abdul was making records in California, he was a kid in Gaza watching Eminem fly through the air.
His father listened to everything from traditional Arabic music to rock, rap, and pop, giving Abdul an early introduction to different sounds. But hip-hop was what caught his attention.
One of the first songs he remembers connecting with was Eminem’s “Not Afraid.” He was around seven years old and kept returning to its music video, even though he couldn’t understand what Eminem was saying.
“I felt like Eminem was a superhero to me,” Abdul says.
Eventually, he started digging deeper. Tupac, Nas, and Jay-Z became part of his rotation. So did hip-hop documentaries and movies. Listening to rap helped him learn English.
Once he became comfortable enough with the language, Abdul decided to try it himself. About a year and a half later, he was signed to Empire. That story makes its way into his debut album, which Abdul has structured in three acts.
“Is It Real, Part One” starts with the years he spent trying to get to the United States. The second part picks up after he finally arrived, back when America seemed to be everything Abdul had imagined it might be.
He was recording music, meeting artists he had grown up listening to, and getting opportunities that would have been difficult to imagine a few years earlier. He met Snoop Dogg and performed at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
Then, his priorities changed. Abdul stepped away from music and focused on getting his family who were still in Gaza out. Nearly two years would pass before he fully returned to recording. “Is It Real, Part Three,” the album’s outro, deals with what happened during that time and who Abdul became. But Day By Day, Shway Shway isn’t all heavy.
Title track “Shway Shway” sees Abdul trying something different. The titular Arabic phrase roughly translates to “little by little” or “take it slow”—something Abdul heard growing up in Gaza. The song is dedicated to children who have been forced to grow up too quickly, a subject that hits close to home for him.
But instead of matching that subject with a somber record, Abdul went in another direction, rapping over an Afrobeats-inspired production for the first time.
The contrast is intentional. For Abdul, part of returning to music has meant figuring out how to talk about what he has experienced without allowing those experiences to become the entirety of his art.
“Missing Home” approaches things from another angle. The track looks back at Gaza and the people Abdul left behind, while also dealing with what it means to miss a place that has changed dramatically since he left. There’s nostalgia in the record, but also distance.
Across the album, songs reference one another, connecting different periods of his life. It makes Day By Day, Shway Shway sound like Abdul catching listeners up on where he’s been.
That’s a story that goes beyond the album. Abdul and Empire have also created an interactive game inspired by his journey from Gaza called “Wein Abdul?”—which is Arabic for “Where’s Abdul?”
Players search for the rapper throughout illustrated environments representing different periods of his life, each full of Easter eggs and memories. It’s an unusual piece of album promotion, but it fits a project built around movement.
A lot has changed since Abdul first arrived in California at 15.
He’s living with his entire family again. He’s finishing high school. And after nearly two years away from music, he’s releasing the first full-length project of his career.
Abdul calls it a comeback.
Stream MC Abdul’s music and pre-save Day By Day, Shway Shway here.
