DJ Lethal Skillz · DJ · Turntablist

What I Do

What you can book: five disciplines, one practice.

DJ · PERFORMANCE ARCHIVE · 2024–2017
Turntablism · The Instrument · 2014
THE CRAFT LIVES AROUND THE DECKS.
Turntablism is more than what happens between the needles and the faders. It is a language built in rooms full of people: DJs, skratchers, students, friends and strangers, passing technique from one set of hands to another.
From Beirut to Kuala Lumpur, the practice has always been about gathering: sharing records, trading cuts, building sessions, creating spaces to learn, and keeping the culture moving forward.
This is the community around the instrument.
From the culture to the room.
Signature · The Voice
Cultural Guide
Sometimes the work moves from the decks to the conversation. Decades inside the culture, asked to tell its story: the history of Lebanese and Arab hip-hop, its identity, and what it means in different rooms.
Hip-Hoppin' Asia, Lebanon episode, 8TV Malaysia · Season 2 · 2015
01
Created Moments
TECHNICAL AUTHORITY
2007 · Dubai
DMC World DJ Championship, GCC
Judge, the culture's own world championship
Called to adjudicate the region's best DJs at DMC's GCC battles. Technical authority recognised by the culture itself.
HIP-HOP CULTURE
2013–14 · Kuala Lumpur
Raising The Bar
Hip-hop as a tool to drive socio-political change
A conversation about Arabic and Lebanese hip-hop, spoken from inside the culture. One of the early practitioners who helped shape it, Skillz talked about hip-hop as a language of identity, expression and education, with space for social commentary, carried from MENA into Southeast Asia's hip-hop scene.
EDUCATION
Dubai
Art of the DJ
Teaching is part of the practice
The turntables are an instrument, and teaching someone to use them is how the language stays alive. Workshops and community sessions, hands on the equipment, students close around the decks.
World Islamic Economic Forum11th EditionKuala Lumpur · 3–5 November 2015
CULTURE × CONVERSATIONS
2015 · Kuala Lumpur
World Islamic Economic Forum, 11th
Creative contribution, forum masthead design
A global economic forum's identity, carrying a DJ's hand. Around it, fragments from other rooms where the culture was asked to speak.
02
Documented
Mark LeVine · University of California Press, 2022
We'll Play till We Die
Journeys across a Decade of Revolutionary Music in the Muslim World
Skillz's work appears in Mark LeVine's 2022 study of revolutionary music across the Muslim world, connecting the New World Disorder era to the wider history of Lebanese hip-hop.
03
What I Talk About
MusicThe culture · The industry
CultureHip-hop · Heritage · Future
Technology / creator economyTools · Innovation · Ownership
Creative entrepreneurshipBuilding · Staying true
Book Skillz
Beats, scratches, records and collaborations built across borders.
Signature
Scratch Hooks
A distinctive turntable language brought into records, collaborations and commissions.
Squid Gamez · Co-production with cut hook, Def Ill, Austria · 2021
Defenders of the Culture, multi-country record (2025)
The Re-Awakening, W.M.D. (Tunisia)
Anghami Cypher, platform-commissioned scratches (2018)
Most Gritty City, production + scratches (2025)
01
Build Across Borders
HIP-HOP → FILM
2011
The United
Remixer, DJ Lethal Skillz
Official remix for the Arabic Disney film. A Disney / Touchstone Pictures commission, contracted work-for-hire.
Composer: Omar Fadel · Features: Omar Offendum · Deeb · Salah Edin
AN ALBUM BUILT ACROSS BORDERS
2012
Karmageddon
Album, executive production, 17 tracks
An album built across borders. Artists from across the Arab world and its diaspora, released physically in 2012, digitally in 2022.
Shadia Mansour · Omar Offendum · Narcy · Boikutt · Arabian Knightz
A PLATFORM COMMISSIONED THE TURNTABLE LANGUAGE
2018
Anghami Cypher
Scratches, a platform-commissioned hip-hop cypher
Anghami commissioned Skillz to bring his turntable language into its first hip-hop cypher. Curated by Big Hass and produced by Sandhill, the project brought together nine MCs from across the region.
Shiboba · Omar Offendum · Bu Kolthoum · Meryem Saci · Narcy · Lowkey · Edd Abbas · Deeb · Muqata'a
Watch the cypher
ONE BEAT → A NETWORK OF VOICES
2022
30 Arab MC's On One Track
One beat, a network of voices
Twenty-six named contributors from across the Arab hip-hop network and diaspora on a single record.
Omar Offendum · Deeb · RGB · Malikah · MC Moe · Rayess Beik · Boikutt · La Gale · + 18 more contributors
DETROIT ↔ CAIRO
2025
Most Gritty City
Production and scratches, remix
US ↔ Arab-world bridge: Honest Resistance with Marv Won and One Be Lo.
Marv Won · One Be Lo · Honest Resistance
02
What I Build
BeatsOriginal production / beat licensing
Scratch HooksCustom scratches and turntable compositions
Mixing + MasteringProduction finishing / engineering
CollaborationBuild something together
Book Skillz
DOCUMENTEDSKILLZLEGACYDUBAIJAPANBEIRUTLONDONSESSIONHIP-HOPDECADESRADIOVINYLWORLDCULTUREARCHIVETURNTABLISMSCRATCHBeirut · Dubai · Japan · London · France · USASelected from the Skillz archive
DJ Q-BERT — DMC World Championship · Dubai · Judge
TONY TOUCH · APOLLO · VINROC — Rocksteady Crew · Invisibl Skratch Piklz · 5th Platoon
KEITH SHOCKLEE
DJ JAZZY JEFF
BEIRUT — Street Performance
UFO RADIO — DJ Lethal Skillz · Badge
WITH GRANDMASTER FLASH
The Archive
A LIFE INSIDE THE CULTURE.
Photographs, places and documents from a career lived inside hip-hop: the people who built it, the rooms where it happened, the work that came out of it.
Names are part of the archive. Every important figure in these frames is identified.
Selected from the Skillz archive