Tamer Nafar is touring his debut solo album In the Name of the Father, the Imam and John Lennon across Europe. The Palestinian rapper and founding member of DAM has already performed in Birkenhead, London, Berlin, Hamburg, Paris, and Brussels, and remains focused on perfecting his setlist.
"Last night, I think we got it right," Nafar tells Rolling Stone from Amsterdam. "That sequencing of the story, which song to go after which, it's so important. We like to get it right, to experiment, to tell that story."
The album represents years of work, shaped by Nafar's decades in hip-hop and his experience as a Palestinian artist bearing witness to political events.
Nafar grew up in Lydda, a mixed Palestinian-Jewish city near Tel Aviv. Poverty, violence, and neglect marked the area. Teenagers navigated one of the country's largest drug markets while police presence was as threatening as it was absent. Hip-hop became his outlet — Tupac's anti-authority message resonated when lived experience matched the lyrics. Nafar taught himself to write with a dictionary and determination, becoming a pioneering Palestinian rapper when the genre barely existed in the Middle East.
In the late '90s, he co-founded DAM with his brother Suhel and friend Mahmood Jreri. Their breakout single "Min Irhabi?" ("Who's the Terrorist?") went viral after a Rolling Stone France mention, establishing their place in Arabic hip-hop.
Nafar is now fluent in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, and has worked across music, acting, and screenwriting. The tour demonstrates that hip-hop functions as testimony as much as entertainment.
