Enter the Mammoth

Eslam Jawaad was born (as Wissam Khodur) in Damascus, to Syrian and Lebanese parents. He spent most of his childhood between Damascus and Beirut — where he fell under the tutelage of Lebanon’s largest drug trafficker and, to put it kindly, on hard times. Jawaad is a big man, and not easily intimidated, but his dreams lay in something grander than distributing drugs to Israeli middle-men: he wanted to be an Arab hip-hop star.

Sometime around the moment he found himself about to smuggle a prehistoric Syberian mammoth tusk into Syria, Jawaad booked it out of Lebanon. In 2003, he settled — via New Jersey and Fairfax County, Virginia — in London, where his demo tape came to the attention of Cilvaringz, the Morrocan-born Wu-Tang rapper and producer. His first album, “The Mammoth Tusk,” is out now, featuring contributions from The RZA, De La Soul, and Damon Albarn of the Gorillaz. (Also, a cover photo of Jawaad lounging on the tusks of the woolly mammoth at the British Museum, which he says he nearly knocked over during the shoot.)

Last week, in Damascus, Jawaad played an impromptu set at Marmar, a jubilant and aging (it was one of the first nightclubs permitted in Syria, some fifteen years ago) venue in the Old City that contradicts everything that makes Damascus a charming place. The music of choice that night (every night?) was House, and the Syrian kids seemed confused at first about what to make of Jawaad’s old-school-style hip hop.

It was steamy hot in the room, and the power cut out twice during the show, but it didn’t matter — during the song Criminuhl, Jawaad and his back-up singers just kept going until the lights and dj booth were back in action. (“Usually when something goes wrong,” his British dj said later, “everyone blames the dj. But not here. They seemed to know it wasn’t my fault.”)

“Criminuhl” – 3:19

Outside Marmar, after the show, Jawaad, who is in the middle of a worldwide tour — he and his dj and back-up singers were driving to Beirut that night — said, “I used to perform here all the time as a kid, so when I heard I was coming to Beirut, I just said, I have to stop through Damascus.” Inside, the lights were flashing and the House music had come back up, and I was glad to be out in the street.

“The Mammoth Tusk,” is out on Eslamophoic Music, and via iTunes.

The music, sung in both Arabic and English, is definitely not Souja-Boy style contemporary hip-hop; it’s more thuggish, at times, and more melodic. You can definitely hear the influence of Wu-Tang Clan, and something that sounds a bit like the Beatnuts. Here’s one of my favorite tracks, “Rewind DJ,” featuring De La Soul (4:37).