In 2019 a friend in Rabat showed me a video of Houda Abouz, who raps under the stage name Khtek. I started following her career, first as a fan and later as a researcher. By 2020 she had performed in several independent music festivals throughout Morocco, more than doubled her social media following, and collaborated with several monumental rappers like Stormy, Tagne, ElGrandeToto, and Don Bigg. The year 2020 marked the release of four singles, and she was named one of the hundred most influential women in the world by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC 2020). Her first official single, “KickOff,” has 2.1 million views on YouTube.

In her own words, Khtek’s bass-heavy, trap-influenced music highlights “things that really matter to me, which are mental health, women’s rights, the situation I live in . . . [and] things that I see in myself and my society” (Edu 2023)....

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