Yassin “Narcy” Alsalman is a hip-hop musician, actor, professor and multi media artist living in Montreal. Formerly known as the Narcicyst, Alsalman is a pioneer of the Arab Hip-Hop movement. He is an Iraqi-Canadian who was raised in Montreal and Abu Dhabi. He earned a bachelor degree from Concordia University in political science and communications studies, and a masters degree in media studies. His non-fiction writing on Arab identity and hip-hop can be found within his Diatribes of a Dying Tribe (2011). Alsalman is a co-founder, with Sundus Abdul Hadi, of the artist collective We Are The Medium, that describes itself as is a culture point for communication through video, music, print and visual arts.
Poetry
Text Messages or How I Found Myself Time Travelling
Halifax: Roseway Publishing, an imprint of Fernwood Publishing, 2020.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Composed entirely on a smartphone during air travel and married to artwork from comrades, Narcy’s writing speaks of the existential crises experienced by diasporic children of war before and during imperialism in the age of the Internet. Narcy’s verses span the space between hip-hop and manifesto, portraying a crumbling, end-stage capitalist society, visions for a new reality, and the myth of multiculturalism in post-9/11 North America. The wordsmith hollows and transmogrifies the grotesque excess of the West by juxtaposing McLife with images of death, destruction, and trauma in the East.
From the depths of apathetic consumerism arises a voice of spiritual self-realization that explodes the misrepresented, mythical monolith of Islam in the West and with the rubble builds healing through intelligent resistance and radical love.