Hanni El Khatib

In the life of any interesting artist, there is the perpetual war between the simplicity of public perception and the complexities of reality. Consider Hanni El Khatib, a purveyor of visceral, blues-wracked, punk-spiked, soul-warped, knife fight rock n’ roll. You may be familiar with him through his solo albums, his work with Dan Auerbach, or as one of the rare polymaths able to artfully blend guitars and rap on collabos with GZA and Freddie Gibbs. And while these are all real things that could accurately yield a sketch of the multi-dimensional artist, they amount to little more than a black and white pencil sketch.  
 More compelling is the Hanni El Khatib of terrestrial existence, who is less susceptible to being pigeonholed. There is the Hanni El Khatib who existed before he was a professional musician. This was the rap and punk-revering SF skate rat, who grew up digging in the crates for samples to flip on his bedroom MPC -- who would eventually become the creative director of HUF. There is the second chapter in which El Khatib moved to LA to pursue music full-time and found himself embraced by the LA Times who said that El Khatib's voice is like “woodsmoke or bourbon, acrid yet sweet, as timeless as jeans and a T-shirt… versatile enough to make a classic sound fresh again.” While across the pond, The Guardian claimed that El Khatib was like “if Joe Strummer came back as an angry young Filipino-Palestinian American.” Then there's the current third chapter...