He is treated like a prince in Hay al-Mohammadi, the district of slums, markets,immigrants and workingclass Moroccans out of which he began to scramble as a 15-year-old,singing with one of the first rap groups in Morocco, CasaMuslim.
Muhammad Bahri, now 29, is proud of the district, which was central to popular resistance to French colonial rule, and the people here are proud of him, a kid who made it out, an old urban story.
People slap him on the back, buy him coffee, ask him about his parents and his recent marriage, and talk about their problems - poverty, the police, drugs in the neighborhood,their kids.
But it has not been such an easy ride for Bahri, who goes by the stage name of Barry, which is printed on his yellow T-shirt. His political songs,criticising a feared former interior minister and the police, have gotten him into trouble, and his performances at some music festivals have been disrupted.
In one famous song, called Driss ,he took on Driss Basri, who ran the Interior Ministry from 1979 to 1999,known here as "the years of lead".Basri was considered King Hassan II's tough right hand, his iron fist,keeping order through wide-scale detentions, repression and the torture of prisoners.
"Driss was a farmer and became a policeman," Bahri sings.
"We told him to keep an eye on the stick and then he beat us with it.Enough, enough, enough from that stick."
Later, he sings:"They gave him the keys to the safe, and he locked it in front of us."
"People were quite shocked by this," he laughed, pushing his RayBans up onto his forehead.
"But with each album I try to do a song that shocks the people."
Basri was dismissed by the current king, Muhammad VI, within months of his accession to the throne in 1999, after the death of his father. The former minister exiled himself to Paris, where he died in 2007, at 69. He was buried in Rabat, but the only member of the government to attend the funeral was the current interior minister, Chakib Benmoussa.
Near Hay al-Mohammadi, in Derb Moulay Sherif,there is an infamous underground prison, originally built by the French, where conditions for political prisoners were said to be unspeakable under Basri.The new king earned much respect from ordinary Moroccans when he made a personal visit to the prison without warning; it was later closed.
Bahri's grandfather, a poet, spent time in the prison,arrested for opposition to French rule, Bahri said.
A song like Driss would have been impossible under the reign of King Hassan, Bahri said. King Muhammad has loosened restrictions considerably on the news media and popular culture, but within limits that include criticism of the king and the monarchy.
Under King Hassan, Bahri said, it was difficult to say anything, so musicians created a style, a kind of Moroccan popular music called chaabi , similar to Algerian ra, which plays with traditional folk melodies.But now there are more modern blends and stronger content.
"Here it is possible now to bark, but gently," Bahri said.
In 2003, when Islamic radicals set off a series of bombs in Casablanca, killing 45, wounding hundreds and shocking Morocco, Bahri was playing at a club 200 yards from one of the blasts.
The room was shaking, and we kept playing," he said."We thought it was an earthquake."
He soon understood differently and went into the street.
"I saw everything destroyed," he said, still astonished in the retelling.
"There were a lot of arrests, and a lot of people put into jail who had nothing to do with anything, but we had a problem of al-Qaida cells here."
His first response was to write a song aimed at alQaida called Who Are You?"You made terrorism, it was a present for Bush," he
sings, referring to former President George W Bush."Do you want peace,or do you want the politics of the CIA?"
The song continues:"You start to wear big trousers, and you grow your beard, and you wear tagia [a knitted cap].
"You speak of resistance but you are tamed monsters. If you understood the Koran, there wouldn't be bombs."
But Bahri also wrote a song attacking the international politics of Bush, called Johnny Walker Bush, Li Man Habbouch (The One We Dislike)."The blood of every Arab is not enough for me," he sings."How greedy! We sent him to hell."
Bahri left the neighborhood five years ago, but he tries to keep in touch with his parents and friends there, partly in search of material that will make his songs resonate.
"I always get my ideas from these poor districts, I read the newspapers and follow the news," he said.
"I have the feeling I can influence things through my songs."
Many of Morocco's poor are illiterate, and Bahri believes that his songs can educate and inspire."I see myself as an ambassador or a journalist,and I try to reach people who don't read newspapers," he said.
Bahri's father was an excellent soccer player who made the national team. Later, he became an engineer on the national train network. He never made much money, but pushed Bahri to get an education.
In Hay al-Mohammadi, where Bahri's parents, brother and sister still live, there are signs of rebuilding and development."Before M6,"as King Muhammad VI is known "they forgot this district," Bahri said.But beyond the market and the nearby hovels for the poor, there are some new and renovated schools,including a new sports center and playground. There are some programs to send children to seaside camps in the summer.
But poverty and illiteracy remain high here."These people were all in crisis before the crisis arrived,"Bahri said."If you don't work here, you don't eat. If you stay at home, you die."
Muhammad Mardi,66, a retired teacher, greeted Bahri and congratulated him on his marriage. Mardi was supervising three young men cementing broken tiles in front of a shop, to create a more decorative walkway.
One of the men, Khaled al-Omari,24, said he had little work and lived with his mother, who sells vegetables at the market, and four siblings."When I can, I clean fish at the market," he said."I don't even earn 50 dirhams [215 baht] a day."
There is anger, too. In the market, near the flystrewn stalls for butchered meat, a bearded vendor said in Arabic to Bahri, referring to the American journalist:"You take care of him. If not, we'll slaughter him." It was not said in a lighthearted fashion.
"Poverty is also in the head," Bahri said, then began laughing."We all need psychiatrists."
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