On “Chouka”, Manal spends a whole song trying to talk a man into it, half in Darija, half in French, tossing him a “take it easy” one moment and a “sans politesse” the next. The flattery comes in brand names: he is a Tiffany diamond, a multivitamin in her blood, a car she floors down an endless highway.

She is one of Morocco’s best-known pop singers, a rapper turned singer from Casablanca who made her name on songs about women and how society treats them. Lately she has thrown herself into raï, the working-class dance music of western Algeria and eastern Morocco, and said she wants to take it somewhere new.

“Chouka” came out on 16 August, one of a run of singles Manal has fired out through 2026.

Stream “Chouka” HERE