17-year-old Palestinian rapper MC Abdul just released the music video to his latest single “Wait For Me,” featuring Palestinian singer Nai Barghouti.
The track finds MC Abdul – now living in San Francisco as a refugee – imagining himself as a superhero in Gaza, freezing time just moments before a missile strike. In that suspended moment, he reflects on his upbringing, his deep-rooted love for hip-hop, and the role music played as a form of escape while growing up under occupation and blockade.
“Wait For Me” is a meditation on stolen childhoods, contrasting the innocence of youth with the realities of war. Rather than hiding from one another in a game of hide-and-seek, children are forced to seek shelter from F-16 airstrikes, turning what should be ordinary memories of growing up into experiences shaped by conflict and survival.
As Abdul narrates his story, Nai Barghouti’s haunting vocals add another layer to the song’s dark atmosphere, gliding effortlessly between notes and lending the track a sense of tension, grief, and emotional weight.
The newly released video offers an unsettling visual interpretation of the song’s lyrics, capturing scenes of larger-than-life violence and destruction that blur the line between conceptual music video and Al Jazeera’s six-way split-screen live feeds from Gaza.
“Wait For Me” is the first glimpse into a larger project, as MC Abdul is set to release a full-length LP later this year.
“In a place where education isn’t a given, the power of music has a way of shining through, especially with a gift like MC Abdul’s.” — Rolling Stone, naming MC Abdul to its ‘Future 25’ list.
