Saudi royal becomes R&B singer

Prince Faisal bin Mansour

A Saudi royal recently attempted to give himself a makeover… as an R&B star.

Prince Faisal bin Mansour bin Thunayan al-Saud, member of a cadet branch of the House of Saud, just came out with two Islamic-themed R&B songs about family values and suicide prevention. While that may sound strange, there are approximately 7000 Saudis who belong to the House of Saud — most of whom are obscenely rich. Odds are that one of them had to attempt a pop music career sooner or later. Faisal bin Mansour is the son of one of King Abdullah’s 36 brothers.

Prince Faisal’s first two songs were posted to his personal website, Islam is Eternal. The site offers a pop star-style photograph of Faisal, along with free downloads of the songs “Dear Mother Dear Father” and “Never Too Late.”

“Never Too Late” is a religiously-themed anti-suicide PSA track with a professionally made music video:

The music video received approximately 70-80 plays a week on MTV Arabia and received over 4000 hits on YouTube daily.

According to the video’s director, Silvio Saade, it is the first time a Saudi prince has ever sung or performed in a music video. Lyrically, the song veers into exactly what you would expect from a rich Saudi royal with Beyonce and piety on the mind:

It was at this at this party / where I saw this shorty / and she was all over the place / tried to get male attention / by wearing short dresses / but she had a sad look on her face / young sister / you ain’t gotta dress the way that you seen on TV / be true to (Allah) yourself nobody else / and believe me you’re gonna be free / everybody makes mistakes / but it’s no reason to lose your faith / just believe that God is great / and inshalla you’ll find your way

Faisal has also had job stints in the past as a professional bodybuilder and as a professional motorcyclist.

Judging from one Saudi Facebook page, the fans seem to love it.

In an interview with local English-language mag What’s Up Jeddah, Faisal bin Mansour says that his pop music career is all about the religion:

I am working on two other songs right now that will also focus on sending messages to the youth. We simply want to spread the message that it’s never too late to go back to Allah, it’s never too late to fix all the mistakes we make throughout our lives, it’s never too late to help and support our parents who took care of us while we were young. I think that those are good causes we should all support, we want to rebuild our Islamic culture, the culture we all should be proud of, and to show the world what our religion is all about, and that coincides with King Abdullah’s efforts with the interfaith dialogue.

But the prince may never get to record those last two songs. According to the Jerusalem Post, the Saudi royal family has put the kibosh on Faisal’s R&B career:

But then suddenly everything stopped.

The YouTube video, which had been viewed by well over 100,000 people, disappeared. Most public references to the Saudi prince could no longer be found online, along with most references to Faisal’s music.

Saudi analysts speculated that the royal family had ’settled’ the matter, making it clear to Prince Faisal that he was expected to stop his public singing career.

Although the Jerusalem Post obviously isn’t the most objective paper when it comes to Saudi affairs, they appear to be right on that front: The official video has been pulled from YouTube and all the copies available are fan reposts. Shame.