ABOUT
If you are interested in music, adventure, or learning about the world, The Safe House Travel Diary is a must-listen.
Welcome to The Safe House Travel Diary, a global exploration of hip hop through intimate conversations with local artists in their safe houses— where they live and create. Every season I immerse myself in a new place. This is Season One: Three Nights in Beirut.
Inspired by Kendrick Lamar's lyric about “venting in the safe house,” I started The Safe House Travel Diary to have honest conversations with hip hop artists about life in the misunderstood corners of the world.
Season one: "Three nights in Beirut"
In this season I travel to the motherland: Lebanon. In upcoming seasons I will expand my exploration to cities across the Middle East, North Africa, and the rest of the world.
Meet the host
Hi! I'm Soha! I'm a Beirut-born, LA-based guerrilla storyteller focused on the Middle East and North Africa
When I'm not in my sleepy LA suburb with my three kiddos, I’m either traveling for this podcast, or I’m in Dubai hosting The Safe House Live (coming soon!), a studio show about emerging artists representing the Middle East and North Africa.
My world view was shaped by my experiences growing up in LA and traveling back to Lebanon in the summers. My birth in Beirut was sandwiched between the bombings of the Marine barracks and American Embassy in 1983. Growing up in Los Angeles in the 80s and 90s, I spent my weekends, holidays, and school breaks at the Market Street Swap Meet in Inglewood where our family clothing store catered to LA’s hip hop community. It was the era of Dre, Snoop, and Pac. That's where I experienced the ability of rap music to reflect, transmit, and shape culture. As a testament to my family's relationship with the community, our store was one of the few businesses in the entire swap meet that was not looted or damaged during the LA Riots in 1992. My family still operates a business in South Los Angeles where my father continues to be loved and respected by the local community.
I spent most of my summers in the South of Lebanon once the civil war ended in Lebanon in 1990. Until Israel withdrew from the South in 2000, we could still hear and feel fighting in our hills and valleys between guerrilla foot soldiers and the Israeli military.
My curiosity about the world and people led me to study World Religions (UCLA 2005) and Islamic Studies (CGU 2012) in college, and I worked in non-profit communications for over a decade with organizations such as Oxfam America (where I spent three months on tour as "the NGO roadie" with Coldplay), UN Women, Neumann Foundation, The Will and Jada Smith Family Foundation, Bayan College, and more. In classic post-pandemic style, I started asking myself how I want to spend this next chapter of my life. The Safe House is my space to explore the questions of where I’m from, what local music says about it, and my role in her story.
I released The Safe House Travel Diary on my and Kendrick Lamar's birthday, June 17.