“Falnukmel,” the first single from Palestinian producer and rapper Julmud’s forthcoming album Tuqoos, is an industrial trap barrage. The density is startling, the bass brushing up against wet scrapes and lazery fields, propellant and unabating—a counter to the impassive sterility of the apartheid state’s machinery and the empty-hall trance music that is its unmistakable hum. Here, we have something dirtier, more Palestinian, exhaust-pipe bass and scrap metal crashing alongside Julmud’s vocals.

Though he’s better known for his work as a producer and keyboardist, it’s Julmud’s songwriting that lands here, with the lyrics being the track’s standout. “I’d help you, but the minimum wage’s low,” he spits over the textured claustrophobia, in a distorted downtempo curve. Influenced by Muqata’a (one of Palestine’s experimental rap godfathers) and the Ramallah Underground (a Second Intifada hip-hop outfit that disbanded in 2009), Julmud is one of the contemporary Ramallah set, evincing some of its hypermasculine chest-thumping and twitchy uneasiness in the severity of his voice. The new album’s artwork, by Palestinian artists Ruanne Abou-Rahme and Basel Abbas—part of the Bilna’es label that includes Julmud and Palestinian rapper Dakn—is a phlegmy X-ray reminiscent of Rula Halawani’s photo negatives of the Israeli occupation.

In the fragmentary world of Palestinian hip-hop, verses about collective resistance and the cowardice of leadership coalesce around the quotidian social grievances of life under Zionism: traffic, garbage, checkpoints. From a vantage point atop this mound, you can feel the neck crane: “With money they bought your silence, trampling on your dignity, your soul is fermenting/No brother, I’m not like this, I’m floating, I’m high.” This is perhaps Ramallah’s unfortunate bargain. In English, “Falnukmel” means “let’s continue.” Yes, but how much longer now?