DISCOGRAPHY
Curious where the samples came from? Browse the playlists on my YouTube channel.
RHV2
RHV2 is a heavily sample-driven, mostly lo-fi project inspired by the style of hip-hop I enjoy both listening to and making. It's a sound I've continued to explore ever since.
Read more
The album originally started as a heartbreak project called red hairs. I still have some of the early lyrics and beats from that version, but RHV2 evolved into something much more polished with a stronger sense of direction.
Rather than relying on lyrics, I wanted the samples and instrumentals to tell a story that the listener could piece together with enough attention. It isn't an especially meticulous or carefully planned instrumental album, because this version was originally meant to have vocals. I ultimately decided against including them, but I think the music still tells a complete enough story on its own.
Looking back, this was the project where I discovered myself as both a beatmaker and a person, shaping the sound, structure, and creative approach I still use today.
This is a picture me and my friend taken in 2025. I chose it as the album cover because it was the most recent picture I had of me sharing a sweet, simple moment with someone just eating tangerines with cute dog forks.
This album cover is actually the inspiration behind the orange and green color scheme of this website.
pestoهات
Compared to RHV2, this project is much less emotionally charged. Instead, I wanted to showcase how much I'd improved as a producer while exploring styles I'd never experimented with before.
Read more
During its production, I met clockwize, who contributed to one of the tracks and helped shape the project through his suggestions and feedback. I'd link his work, but despite my constant attempts to get him to upload his stuff to YouTube, he just won't. 🤷♂️
Although it isn't as personal as my previous work, I don't think every project has to be an emotional deconstruction of myself. Sometimes you just have to have fun with it! Some of my most polished, grand-sounding beats sit alongside some of my most minimal back-to-the-basics ones, creating a contrast that gives the project a more energetic and cohesive identity despite leaning closer to a beat tape than a traditional album.
This is Japanese Islamicate calligraphy by Naoki Yamamoto.
I feel like it fits since the opening track samples a Japanese song, and it's simultaneously Arabic calligraphy when rotated 90 degrees.
اغاني مش هتعجب ابوك
The confrontational title was inspired by my actual father. He doesn't really like hip-hop, especially the way I make beats. I figured that if I made something he'd absolutely hate, I'd probably be making something that was true to myself.
Read more
This is my favorite and probably best work to date. It feels like the culmination of everything I want my music to be.
This project sits somewhere between RHV2 and pestoهات in terms of emotional relevance. I made it while turning twenty and trying to come to terms with the fact that I was no longer a teenager and that things were starting to get real. You could think of it as one last grasp at the rebellious spirit I always thought I had.
More than anything, this was the project where everything finally came together. I wasn't chasing technical improvement like I was on pestoهات, and I wasn't looking inward as much as I did on RHV2. I already knew the kind of music I wanted to make, so I could focus on bringing that vision to life.
I think this is me at my most experimental. If throwing things at the wall until they stuck was an album, it'd be this. I mixed different genres with hip-hop and experimented with a much wider variety of sounds, samples, and production techniques while still not sounding all over the place—it still sounds like a Pesto album. My personal highlights are the opening two-parter, what's on my mind is on there, and the ending.
This was also the first time I didn't just dump the entire project into a single video. Instead, I uploaded each track separately, which I think is a much better way to present my work going forward.
Oh yeah, and clockwize is here again. Collaborating with me might be the only way to get his work onto the internet.
This is a self-portrait by a friend of mine.
I liked the blown out Y2K aesthetic and the early 2010s punk vibe. It definitely captures that raw creative and uncompromising sense of youth I was trying to convey.