Music, espeially hip hop, has always been at the heart of social and political upheaval, inspiring change and speaking out against inequality and injustice. With the rise of revolution in the Middle East and North Africa, rappers from the region are also using music to bring about change.
Amkoullel, Malian hip-Hop artist; Deeb, Egyptian hip-hop artist and poet; and Shadia Mansour, the first lady of Arabic hip-hop, join HuffPost Live's Ahmed Shihab-Eldin in studio to discuss the role they play in political revolution.
Mansour, a Palestinian female rapper said what they are doing today as musicians is to build for the future.
"The hip-hop that you see today on MTV is not the hip-hop that I can relate to," Mansour said, adding that today there are more sources of conflict because people are dividing community. "I think that you can use stuff like political symbols to divide communities, you can use religion to divide communities and that's one of the biggest threats we face."
As hip-hop artists, Deeb stresses he hopes to use music to help people get through the tough times and make a change for the better.
"We're trying to redefine our identity because the past 60 years wasn't reflective of where Egypt was," Deeb said. "Now that we have a free Egypt, supposedly free, then let's just talk about everything now, let's rewrite history."