Sam Kimball

As part of VICE's Next 50 series, VICE News spoke to Tunisia's most prolific female rapper on hip-hop, migration and race in a time of rising authoritarianism in the country.

Tunisia has seen a surge in brutal racist attacks against Black migrants from sub-Saharan countries, and counter-protests, after President Kais Saïed claimed there's a secret campaign to separate Tunisia from its Arab identity.

The government is meting out extreme sentences to thousands of young Tunisians for any kind of drug use or possession, while President Kais Saied has announced that he will rule by decree.

Over 1,000 people are currently stuck in a city on the Tunisian coast with no clear way to leave, dreaming of a better life across the sea in Europe.

Several rappers have already been locked up under Tunisia’s harsh drug laws, and it may soon become illegal to even talk about marijuana in the country.

As a Saudi-led naval blockade has slowed the flow of humanitarian aid into Yemen to a trickle, desperate people packed aboard cattle boats are being ferried by the hundreds to Somalia.

Since late 2011, Tunisian fishermen have been discovering the rotten corpses of migrants escaping poverty and the recent upsurge of unrest in North Africa.

The stories old-timers tell about the Tunisia suburb run counter to the way the West views the Arab World. It was a place where three religions and five languages intermixed, Jews and Muslims partied together, and young ladies flaunted their beach...