For more than a decade, Sons of Yusuf have made songs that sound like Kuwait remembering itself.
The Kuwaiti hip-hop duo’s music carries the humour, cadence and cultural texture of the Gulf. Over time, their songs have become tied to memories of neighbourhoods, friends, old videos and particular moments in people’s lives. With Battle of the Black Gold, those memories are pulled into a more urgent present.
The new album by brothers Ya’Koob and Abdul Rahman Al Refaie responds to regional tension, the legacy of oil and the way the Middle East is often viewed from the outside. Across nine tracks, the duo examine conflict, identity and resilience through hip-hop and the weight of Gulf history.
“We’re not politicians, and we’re not journalists,” Ya’Koob tells The National. “But as artists, and as people who care about this, we felt we had to say something. We had to do something about the subject.”
The project takes its title from oil, a resource often described as “black gold”. It uses that idea to explore how the Gulf has been shaped by wealth, power, vulnerability and global attention, with tracks including WW3, Khaleeji Interlude, No Fly Zone and GCC.
Ya’Koob says the album was not made in the usual way. There was no long process of sitting with tracks, refining the sound and returning to the studio until everything felt perfect. The moment demanded something faster.
“We were in the middle of that tension,” he says. “It wasn’t like before, where we would ask each other, sit down, fix the songs and adjust the sound. No, this was like: ‘OK, this is war. This is what we have to do right now.’”
That urgency also shaped the album’s launch. Battle of the Black Gold was introduced this month with an immersive listening event in Al Ahmadi, Kuwait, inside the warehouse of Spetco, an oil and gas company operating since 1965. Held near the Burgan Oil Field, one of the world’s largest oilfields, the launch location placed the music inside the industrial landscape that inspired it.
Guests heard the album surrounded by oil imagery, industrial symbolism and site-specific art installations. A real sucker rod pump stood inside the warehouse, while its horse head was transformed by Tareq Q, founder and creative director of Kuwaiti label Aota, into a black and gold artwork. A limited-edition Sons of Yusuf x Aota merchandise collection was displayed inside a gold room, extending the album into fashion and art.
Still, Ya’Koob says the heart of Battle of the Black Gold lies in speaking honestly from within the region.
That has long been part of Sons of Yusuf’s appeal. Their music is deeply Kuwaiti, but not narrowly so. It carries local references, humour and language, while speaking to listeners across the Gulf who recognise the same rhythms and cultural codes.
“The Gulf is all one, really,” Ya’Koob says. “When I talk to someone from Saudi Arabia, the Emirates or Bahrain, I feel like we are one. We don’t look at ourselves as different countries.”
He says the brothers grew up listening to Khaleeji music from across the region, not only Kuwait, and that wider Gulf sensibility remains part of their sound.
That sense of shared memory is also why Sons of Yusuf continue to think in albums, at a time when much of the music industry has shifted towards singles, short-form clips and viral moments. Battle of the Black Gold is designed as a complete statement, with its own visual world and conceptual identity.
“Yes, 100 per cent,” Ya’Koob says, when asked whether the duo consciously build their albums around a theme. “Everything is calculated in a way, but it’s not overthought. We are fans of music first and foremost.
“We look at our albums as time capsules,” he adds. “If 10, 20 or 100 years from now, people want to know what happened in this time, I feel that’s what art in general is about. It’s about talking about our times and what we’re going through now.”
That idea is clear in Black Gold, the album’s title track and music video, which draws on images of oil, fire, war and industrial landscapes, including visual echoes of the Gulf War and Kuwait’s burning oilfields.
Ya’Koob was only a child during the Gulf War, but some memories remain.
“There are things I remember properly, yet I ask myself: ‘Was that a dream or did it really happen?’ But when I ask my family, they tell me: ‘No, that is exactly what happened.’”
He is careful not to describe the feeling simply as fear.
“I wouldn’t say trauma,” he says. “Maybe there is trauma from when we were young, but I don’t know how to explain it. Thank God, we’ve never been afraid, but we've also always expected anything. That’s life.”
The Black Gold music video was created using artificial intelligence, a decision Ya’Koob says came from necessity as much as experimentation. In ordinary circumstances, Sons of Yusuf would have shot a conventional music video. This time, speed mattered more.
“We were in the middle of a war, and we weren’t looking at anything else,” he says. “It was about what was the fastest thing we could do to put the message out.”
A friend showed him how to use the technology, and it quickly became clear that AI offered a way to finish the video immediately.
“I thought: ‘This is easy. We could finish this right now. Let’s put it out right now. We need to put it out as soon as possible. We don’t have time to shoot or do anything else.’”
Ya’Koob is not worried that the use of AI in the video will make listeners question whether the music was created the same way.
“You can tell it’s not AI,” he says. “There’s no way. It’s samples and raw beats, samples that I’ve been using for more than 10 years. I don’t think you could get this kind of raw feeling from AI, to be honest.”
He says the choice reflected the pressure of the moment rather than a permanent shift in approach.
“If it weren't for the situation, we would never have done the video like that,” he says. “But in situations like this, you learn things, your art changes and new things come out. That’s the evolution of it.”
That instinctive process remains central to Sons of Yusuf. Ya’Koob does not describe the duo’s work in industry terms, or even as a fixed musical identity.
“I don’t even consider myself a rapper,” he says. “I’ve never said ‘I’m a rapper’ or ‘I’m a musician’. We just do what we feel. We write what we feel.”
With Battle of the Black Gold, Sons of Yusuf are not trying to explain the Gulf from a distance. They are recording what it feels like to live through a moment when the region is once again being watched, discussed and defined by others.
It is another time capsule from a duo who have always understood music as memory.
