The first time we heard of Rotational was through a friend who sells vinyl online, and who spoke with the greatest respect about Karim, a dedicated collector from Rotterdam (the Netherlands) of under the radar 1980s/90s African, Indian and other non-western records. Almost ten years down the line, and without ever having met him, we started coming across Karim’s social media posts, shared with a rapidly growing following. DJ Rotational was now focusing mostly on electronic dance music and hip hop from Africa, the Caribbean, the Hindustani Suriname community in the Netherlands and the rest of the world, without exception artists, songs and entire genres that the majority of his audience was unfamiliar with. His Instagram posts generally follow the same simple but powerful format: a slideshow of cover scans from a tape or CD, accompanied by snippets of the best tracks from that album. Every Rotational post is an exciting journey into unfamiliar territory. Less than two years ago his content started receiving viral attention online. By 2026 he had over 40,000 followers on Instagram and another 10,000 on Youtube, which is no small feat, considering how obscure most of the songs he posts are. Besides working a full-time job, he’s now playing several DJ dates every month across Europe and beyond; at the time of writing, he had just returned from a tour of Australia, while Archived, his NTS Radio show, airs monthly.
Apart from genres from the ‘90s and 00’s, such as bubblin’, chutney and kuduro, Rotational also shared the occasional African hip hop from tapes and CDs. Born to a father from Morocco and a Dutch mother, and growing up around Holland’s most multicultural city, his international musical taste and open mind might not come as a surprise, but as he explains, it was not an obvious path towards his current position of sharing the most obscure and surprising musical mashups from less likely places with attentive audiences around the world. There’s not a lot of info or even photos online about Rotational, who purposely doesn’t put his ego before the music, and he takes his role as a medium for sharing unheard or forgotten tunes and the stories behind them very seriously. He owns what may be one of the largest and most diverse digital and analog collections of African and Caribbean music of the past three decades, and it’s to his credit that he didn’t include ‘archivist’ or ‘researcher’ (fashionable terms among DJs nowadays) in his biography, even if one could argue that he really is both.
We finally met online for a brief introduction to a piece on his recent mix for his NTS radio show Archived, but the conversation soon expanded into discussions on gatekeeping in DJ culture, the boundary between appreciation and appropriation, and the role of the DJ beyond the dancefloor.
Rotational: I’ve been DJing for quite a while now. I’m 31 now. When I was sixteen, I was a bit into house music. I think house is a gateway for a lot of people to start DJing. But apart from that, I’ve always listened to hip-hop, punk, that sort of thing, ever since I was young. Punk, metal, loads of hip-hop, and then dance music, I thought that was brilliant. House and techno and that side of electronic music were an introduction to DJing for me, and later to digging in general. That later expanded to Africa, the global South; cumbia, for example. I collected loads of psychedelic stuff, and all sorts of things. At a certain point, as you start digging more, you just naturally come across electronic music in Africa. When it comes to hip-hop, you just come across it at some point. And for me, that was such an eye-opener. I’m Moroccan, and growing up, I didn’t really have people around me I could relate to. And finding, say, punk from Morocco on a 45 from 1976 is just a bit of a full-circle moment, of course.
Jumanne: Did your parents or family introduce you to Moroccan music when you were growing up?
Rotational: No, not at all. A bit of raï from my dad in the car, but I just couldn’t stand it back then. I was actually listening to the exact opposite. It’s precisely that sound that resonated with me at that moment – say, punk or hip-hop or whatever – and the fact that it comes from a place and time you’re from, even though you know absolutely nothing about it, is just fucking sick [laughs]. I think that’s absolutely brilliant. And that’s also why I share and upload so much, do YouTube and that sort of thing. Because I just think it’s important to be able to give that same experience to someone else. Like: ‘Yo, check out what else is out there.’ There’s loads of dope stuff being done right now, for sure. But have a look at it from a non-Western perspective too. Take a look at music, at dance, not just through the lens of house and techno, but discover the local style and how it’s shaped. That’s pretty much where I’m at.
Jumanne: Full circle. My experience was that fifteen, twenty years ago, even with people who were into music off the beaten path, it was sometimes still quite difficult to get certain things across. Like when I first started Africanhiphop.com: whenever I played African hip hop to people who were into hip hop here, they thought it was funny, but they dismissed it: that doesn’t sound right, that’s not up to standard, if you compare those Senegalese cassettes from the late ‘90s with underground, New York hip-hop. And on the other hand, people who were open to African music back then were the sort who went to the Melkweg venue in Amsterdam to see those live Congolese bands. But when you’d play hip hop to them, they’d say: ‘That’s not authentic.’ So there’s always something. Have you noticed that attitude as well, and has it changed for the better?
Rotational: Yes, I think that’s actually still the case. I’ve just been pushing alternative sounds, left-field sounds, for a long time. But I still notice very strongly that a lot of the music is only considered good if it fits within a certain framework. I think a lot of people approach African music from a Western perspective and, in doing so, only really approve of it if it fits within that psychedelic framework. Take Zambia, for example, that whole Zambia reissue wave that happened (mostly of Zamrock, ed.). I feel that’s because people view the music produced there through a kind of exoticism: as in, that music can’t possibly come from there. As a result, when something is released mainstream, it seems extremely special. If you just look at the statistics for record output back then in, say, Nigeria or Zambia, it was so low that the artists who could get their records pressed were, of course, simply local or national legends. And here, those artists are considered extremely underground. I feel that’s largely down to the perception with which people approach this music. I still notice quite clearly that there’s much more enthusiasm for music that fits within a kind of electronic framework than for music that builds more on local genres and styles. I noticed, for example, with the kuduro tracks that people have really started to open up to that. But you also really notice that you can only play that for a very select audience. Because you really shouldn’t just start playing that at a normal house night or something [laughs].
Jumanne: So your normal set isn’t entirely in sync with what you share on Instagram and YouTube?
Rotational: Fortunately it is. I just stick to it. This is simply the sound I love and that’s what I want to play. I do notice that, thankfully, I get booked a lot for events that allow for that. I was in Dublin recently, for example, and it was completely sold out – absolutely mad. People just loved hearing that sound. Before that, in London, it was also absolutely packed – brilliant. But then you can stand there and just play the sound you want. We’d played here in Rotterdam with Sean D., a Dublin house legend, and it was completely sold out. And the following week I was DJing at De Worm for two people, because the person in front of me was playing champeta and cumbia. And I get booked to play kuduro. I also played in Antwerp once, for Kleine Crack, an Antwerp rapper. It was just brilliant. And he’d asked me: I don’t care what people think of it, I just want you to play a kuduro set, but not the club sound, but the proper rap version [laughs]. That just doesn’t appeal to a lot of people who come for a different style of music. So that’s still quite funny every now and then.
Jumanne: When did things really start to take off for you, to the point that you felt there was more acceptance and interest in your approach?
Rotational: I think it’s been about a year and a half now since things really took off. Before that, I’d been doing this for ages just for, let’s say, 1,000 subscribers on YouTube and 600 followers on Instagram. That was back in 2024. At some point, I’d already been thinking that maybe I want to get rid of Instagram. I just enjoyed finding music, uploading and sharing it. And then I thought: I’m just going to give it a go, I’m going to make a few of those reels. Just ten cool CDs, something different too, not records. So I’d done some Moroccan hip-hop tapes, and suddenly that thing got 5,000 likes [laughs]. I was kind of taken aback by it. I thought: what the hell is this? It’s not that I care about that sort of quantitative stuff, but it is really cool to see it: before, there were only five people who really liked it. And I really do try to put my ego aside. But sometimes you just need a bit of a boost, like: hey, I’m not doing this all by myself. It’s really stupid and super paradoxical: you do it because you think it’s cool, but still that kind of quantitative validation gives you extra confidence. And it’s also paradoxical in the sense that you’re pushing music from the global South on systems and infrastructure that are actually responsible for its destruction. So there are loads of crazy aspects to the whole social media thing, but these days it’s just necessary if you want to be a DJ.
Jumanne: What’s been your experience navigating questions of authenticity and cultural belonging as a European DJ playing African music?
Rotational: For me it’s part of a broader issue. If you’re a DJ who plays African music, aren’t marginalised and are, say, Dutch, and you have the opportunity, the platform and the capacity to talk about the events currently unfolding in Africa — the DRC, the Lobito Corridor, Sudan, Kenya, the Delta, you name it — the whole continent is on fire, Congo is still paying a 20% export tax to France, whatever. If you benefit from music that comes from the continent, then I also think you should talk about the struggle that went into it. That doesn’t mean that struggle is a prerequisite for the music, but it is an important part of it. And I feel that point is very often overlooked, because people don’t really dare to, perhaps aren’t sufficiently informed, or aren’t interested in geopolitics. But I do think it’s an important aspect. I think that’s where the line between appreciation and appropriation lies for me: if you also talk about the downside of it, if you’re up to date and informed and you do your research, then: do your thing, share it, certainly don’t gatekeep. But if it’s a case of: you’re just doing it because you want to make €1,000 per gig and you just enjoy it, well, then I simply don’t like you. I feel the same way about people who gatekeep music. I just think that’s really lame; I really don’t like it. They’re also the sort of people who find all their music on blogs like yours and then withhold it from other people. Music is one of the last common denominators we have left. So why would you do that?
Jumanne: Exactly. And there’s the fact that some of the music you play – probably a lot of it, actually – has never had a big platform outside the country it comes from. Do you ever find that certain artists get their place in the spotlight?
Rotational: Yeah, that’s really cool. For example, I recently found an Ethiopian CD by Rasselas & Helina, with that green cover. Crazy. Unfortunately, the quality’s poor; for some reason I can’t get a proper rip, but it’s just fucking brilliant. That CD was recorded in Quebec, right in Canada, and I reckon it’s probably only been pressed about 50 times. And at some point someone posts: ‘all the love is deserved’. That singer with just a small profile, never really made a name for herself, just made this CD, cool, that’s it. Seeing that people are still active, that they’re getting the recognition they deserve, maybe you were ahead of your time but now you can see there’s appreciation for your work – I think that’s absolutely brilliant.
Jumanne: What was your first African tape?
Rotational: I think it was Ahmed and Amine. They were a rap duo from Morocco and they made one of the first Moroccan rap tapes. For me, that was a proper ‘what the fuck’ moment, it was just so dope. Pirate City Sale. That was the first time I actually heard Moroccan hip-hop and really liked it, with that digability factor. A proper tape. I’d been looking for that tape for years, five years or so. And at one point I was at Record Planet and Jannes from Habibi Funk was there. He’d got a few tapes with him, and that was one of them, and then he gave it to me as a gift. Then I got home and tried to record it. But the tape was stuck, it wouldn’t play, it jammed my whole tape deck. So I took the whole tape apart, put a new tape liner in, recorded it in one go and then just put it away in the cupboard.
Jumanne: On Record Planet I also found a tape I’d actually been looking for since the late nineties, by R.A.S. from Ivory Coast. I knew they’d made a first cassette with a track on it that’s on YouTube in poor quality; it’s called Agnanan. There’s a fun video of it too, with those denim jackets, that fashion from around 1988, a sort of hip-house dancing. And I had always thought it was an album, but it turned out to be a cassette single with six remixes or so, and it was just lying there. You know how few cassettes there are at Record Planet. There was one stall from France, and they just had a little box of cassettes. I hadn’t really found any records and was just having a look around, and hey, I spotted R.A.S. And it turned out to be that tape.
Rotational: Cool! And I know which tape it is. I was with Brian at the time, from Awesome Tapes from Africa, and he had the R.A.S. tape.
Jumanne: In your recent African hip hop mix for NTS, you’ve got quite a few tracks, many of which were new to me. Did they all come from one collection, or are they things you’ve gathered over time?
Rotational: Lots of things I’d collected over time. I’d found a few tracks from Mali by Lassy King Massasy. I really liked those, they had to be in there. That’s that 2000s sound that seems to have more of that crunk influence in it, more from the 2004, 2006 period. I think that slightly more modern period is really cool too. And there were a few Moroccan tapes I’d found years ago, but which are also a bit more modern. Senegal definitely as well. Mozambique, Oliver Style. Morocco indeed, but also a really cool one from a very well-known rap compilation; I can send that to you as well. Soulja Boy’s on the cover [laughs], a really unusual cover. And there are also some more Mali tracks in there and Congo by LB Ladi Mpwo. He’s really cool too, he actually commented under the YouTube video back then saying: I know exactly where and when I wrote this song.
Jumanne: You uploaded the tracklist to your mix on NTS, that’s great. But then I do see guys who don’t do that and don’t respond to ID requests either.
Rotational: I just find that really odd. All this stuff I just post on the internet, but gatekeeping is a really hot topic these days. I recently replied to a DJ who was talking about gatekeeping and why it’s important. First of all, as long as you haven’t produced that track, you don’t have much to say. Secondly, why do you get to decide if someone’s worth listening to the music? I think that’s a really odd angle. Plus, people talk about DJ culture, obscuring the labels and whatever. Most people don’t get it. Those people playing aren’t really that fucking special that they should keep it to themselves. They’re just the sort of people who play Sade on the radio. There’s a dark side to DJ culture too. It’s the same argument your parents make: ‘I walked five kilometres uphill to school and back again, so now you have to walk to school too.’ Because I had a rough time, you have to have a rough time too. It’s similar with gatekeeping: because I supposedly spent so much time searching for this one special track, I deserve to listen to it more. Whereas I’m like: if you’re really digging hardcore, using formats different from what most people play, playing different music than what most people listen to, the more you do that, the more you want to share it. Because ultimately, there are very few people who will appreciate it. It’s precisely the heads who go all out for it — the fact that you can share something you’ve found, something you think is fucking brilliant and want to share with more people, that’s worth so much more. The mental gymnastics you have to go through to justify gatekeeping are insane. It always comes down to your own ego, that you think you’re more entitled to something because you’ve supposedly worked harder for it. It’s just a privilege to be in that little shop at exactly the right moment. People make a huge deal out of it and I can’t stand that either. And that quickly turns into a whole lot of sensitivity. For example, when people send me a message saying I can’t post certain tracks because then they will be discovered. If your entire DJ career is built on this one artist and this one track, then you might as well make an effort to give someone the credit they deserve for your career [laughs].
Jumanne: On the other hand, because you’re so open about your tracklist and everything, have you come across people who have a similar approach of sharing?
Rotational: Absolutely, I noticed loads of people do that. The profile and the platform and all that stuff – I’m constantly realising that. An example from this week: I see artwork I’d uploaded to Instagram and people are just making their own posters out of it. And these are proper, massive artists. I even sent DJ Chucky his own album two weeks ago because he didn’t have the digital files. You just notice that people are starting to appreciate this more now, starting to see it more. And I think that’s just really cool. You’re seeing more and more people doing CDs instead of records.
For me, it’s about archiving as a form of resistance. Simply being in control of your own history, your own physical media. In times like these, that’s absolutely crucial, with giants like Google and Azure holding all the data and being able to exert control over it. Just the infrastructure surrounding vinyl — people are totally vinyl-minded, but vinyl simply stopped in so many places in the nineties. North Africa: tapes, no records at all. It’s also about awareness: knowing what you’re doing. Simply shedding more light on the whole socio-economic aspect of vinyl in Africa, and then the next stage after that, cassettes and CDs. The democratisation of physical media, when people could start pressing their own music. And then there’s the period we’re in now, the 2000s, the late 1990s. That’s precisely the period that seems to be fading the most, because people don’t see the value in CDs and they seem to be disappearing even faster than records ever did. And I got really into hunting for CDs because at a certain point I didn’t have any money left for records. At first I was really into records. At a certain point I simply had no money left, and that’s when the second-hand shops came in. And I think that applies to young people now too: it’s all records, a reissue is €40. If you know what an eighteen- or twenty-year-old earns, they really can’t just buy three or four records a month. And so if you can’t afford all your music either, and artists can’t produce their music, well, I do find that problematic. And that also ties in with why it’s important to start looking for CDs: the old stuff you get on vinyl, I feel, doesn’t resonate with young people at all anymore. It’s nice, all the fun stuff from Nigeria, but people just want to hear electronic music, hear hip-hop, things from their youth. They want to hear the Tupac of Zambia.
Jumanne: Do your mixes and social media posts also reach people who experienced that music back then, or who have some sort of cultural connection to it?
Rotational: Definitely. For example, I sometimes get comments like: ‘This is my dad’s music.’ Costuleta, a real legend from Angola, commented on a post I’d done about one of those DVDs: ‘This has been a long-running battle, you know.’ That’s just brilliant. Loads of people comment: ‘This is my youth, this is what I used to listen to.’ I’d just posted a Bubbling Beats track. Big DJ names from that country commented: ‘This was my youth.’ Yeah, that’s absolutely brilliant.
Archived w/ Rotational: Hip-Hop from Africa (NTS)
Or listen via the NTS website.
Tracklist
New Gëstu – Lu Fi Diack
Boul N’Baï – Goree
Da Brains – Na Jaar Yoon
Oliver Style – A Caticao Idzoledzo
Nawfal – Wakrate El Ghiabe
7426 – Titiz
باغتي – مكوربيون
Boul N’bai – Wicked
Lassy King Massassy – Sufe Tubabuya
Fanga Fing – Faso Djo
Hakmin – Track 02
Fanga Fing – Bamako City
Eben Family – Not Listed (Track 11)
LB Ladi Mpwo – Pardon
Lassy King Massasy – Tekere
