Onsy’s Latest Album ‘Baba Fen’ is Stripped Back, But Still Sharp

Cairo-based producer Onsy has always operated at his own particular wavelength. For the better part of a decade, his output has occupied a specific cerebral register; wired, alien, demanding. Baba Fen is a deliberate step away from that. A recalibration of the same restless intelligence, applied to a more direct, more approachable kind of music.

Released through Amman-based label Drowned by Locals, the album is loosely trap-rooted, but doesn't hold itself too strictly to any genre, taking inspiration from IDM, Egyptian pop, and mahraganat. Assembled remotely between Cairo and Haifa with a rotating cast of collaborators; Fara7, Bleng, Illfeel, and Sakt, the defining sound of these features is first-take energy. Vocals turned around in hours, basic recording tools, and slow internet set the tone for the workflow, which makes the album feel far from manufactured, holding its spontaneity without losing weight.

The record opens with 'Zabet Ekaa3', and it sets the terms immediately. Post-sha'abi energy dissolves into digital arpeggios, mahraganat rhythms absorb trap's skeletal logic, and somewhere underneath it all, ambient textures creep in like a slow tide. There's something Aphex Twin-adjacent in Onsy's musical sensibility here; a cool, almost methodical curiosity that never loses sight of its Egyptian roots.

From there, the album's cast of collaborators starts to define its character. On 'Fnan' - featuring Fara7 and Bleng - Fara7 delivers the kind of sardonic expressiveness that makes boasting feel like philosophy. Where as 'Beef f Rg'eef' tightens things considerably. With trap drum rolls becoming the instrumental centerpiece, Bleng stretches into slower flows, and Fara7's verse in double-takes an octave apart is one of the album's stranger and more memorable moments. Melodically, it sticks harder than almost anything else here.

Then there's Illfeel, who arrives on 'Fantanyel' and 'Blikii' like a weather event. An Egyptian underground heavyweight, his style sits somewhere between aggression and extended inside joke, and it works because he means both simultaneously. On 'Sa7raaa', he veers from charismatic flows into an almost growl-whisper that's raspy and strangely compelling, even shouting out Onsy's production mid-track in a way that feels less like a co-sign and more like plain enthusiasm.

Baba Fen is quite an interesting record. Cross-border in method, hybrid in form, and built on an energy that no amount of studio polish could recreate. Onsy's production throughout shows real care: in drum sound selection, in harmonic sensibility, in the way he chases experimentation without losing groove. If there's a critique, it's that though the producer tried to meet the audience halfway, it still stands as an acquired taste, that would probably turn some heads if played on the AUX. But for those already tuned into this frequency, it hits hard. And the stripped-back approach, it turns out, suits Onsy pretty well.