Shabjdeed & Touch Capture the Palestinian Oppression on ‘Kattal’
Produced by Smokaholic, the track comes hot on the heels of BLTNM's Fawzi's latest feature on Kneecap's new album.
Palestinian hip-hop collective and independent label BLTNM return with ‘Kattal’, a new release led by Shabjdeed and Touch, produced by Smokaholic. The track channels the persistent adversity faced by Palestinian youth under Israeli occupation through dark, claustrophobic industrial textures and subtly politically charged lyricism.
Built on syncopated, sliding 808 basslines and rapid-fire hi-hats, the production draws from a hybrid palette of UK and Chicago drill alongside trap influences. It opens with a looping, reverb-heavy vocal sample that sets a disorienting tone. Shabjdeed follows with his signature detached delivery, laced in street slang, before Touch enters with a more animated contrast while maintaining the track’s grime-soaked intensity.
Unfiltered and layered, the lyrics move between personal, social, and political registers, sketching a stark portrait of life in the occupied West Bank. The lyrics feature a recurring fixation on time, which underscores the track’s central tension, an eroded sense of progression in a reality defined by stagnation and violence.
Directed by Aram Sabbah, the music video for ‘Kattal’ sharpens these themes of confinement and defiance, placing Shabjdeed and Touch inside a prison cell as a stark visual extension of the track’s atmosphere.
‘Kattal’ comes hot on the heels of BLTNM’s Fawzi's latest feature on Kneecap’s ‘Fenian’ album, further underscoring the remarkable stature of the Ramallah-based collective in the region’s hip-hop music scene.
