COSMICAT

Dutch DJs and producers Afrojack and Rancido joined emerging Saudi artists Cosmicat, Malkin, and DJ Emad onstage for the session Afrojack’s WALL Camp: Meet the Team. Moderated by MDLBEAST Record’s Matthew Dicks, the artists shared their experiences as part of Afrojack’s WALL Camp, a summer-intensive program to develop young talent from the MENA region.

Cosmicat, a 29-year-old DJ and producer, is part of the first wave of female Saudi DJs. She explains that she’s “mostly self-taught.”

A MDLBEAST Records and Soundstorm

Festival mainstay, she is now making waves internationally, performing at Belgium’s Tomorrowland and Serbia’s EXIT Festival.

The weeklong WALL Camp program included visits to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Boom’s Tomorrowland festival, and more. Each artist was paired with a creative mentor. Cosmicat teamed up with Rancido to produce “some fire stuff.” Both artists came away with a new appetite for collaborative work, Cosmicat explains, “This back and forth of energy creates something special that you can’t do on your own.”

When asked what makes her proudest about the Saudi music scene, she doesn’t hesitate: “For me, doing art and doing music is all about legacy. I am proud of every one of my friends. We started from the underground together, from absolute zero, with absolutely no help, and overcame so much together. And today, we meet each other backstage at big festivals, and we never thought it would happen.”