The archive · Content & Film · Marketing decision · 2022
DJ Snake's Disco Maghreb video resurrects the Algerian raï label the hit is named after
For the global hit 'Disco Maghreb', DJ Snake and director Elias Belkeddar filmed a love letter to the vanished Algerian label and store that made raï famous.
DJ Snake
What it had to solve
Disco Maghreb was a record label and store that popularised raï, music born in western Algeria, before falling into oblivion. When DJ Snake's global hit of the same name brought the phrase back to everyone's lips, the video had to decide what 'Disco Maghreb' would mean on screen; the artist wanted a bridge between generations and origins, a love letter to his Algerian roots.
How it works
Disco Maghreb was a real place: an Oran record label and store that popularised raï, the music born in western Algeria, before slipping into oblivion. When DJ Snake — a Paris-born artist of Algerian descent — released a global hit carrying the same name, the title stopped being a phrase and became a question about what would appear on screen.
The answer was to treat the video as a return visit. Elias Belkeddar directed, with Romain Gavras as creative supervisor, a film shot in Oran and Algiers' Climat de France that moves from a cassette shop to a wedding, cliffs, a camel race and roads crowded with young Algerians on mopeds — raï's world as both tradition and modern youth culture.
The artist described the film as a bridge between generations and origins, linking North Africa, the Arab world and beyond. It closes with the voice of Cheb Khaled, the raï legend, connecting today's global audience to the era when Disco Maghreb made the genre's 'Cheb' artists famous, and the single's artwork restyles the codes of 1980s and 1990s raï cassettes.
The video drew more than 23 million views within days, reached the top of YouTube and was shared by figures such as actor Omar Sy; it earned a place in the D&AD Annual 2023 under Music Videos. The work shows a music video functioning as cultural restitution: the hit restored the label's name to everyone's lips by spending its budget and reach inside the label's own world.
Why it lands
- The video makes the title concrete: instead of a generic party clip, it reconstructs the actual record shop and label the song is named after.
- Shooting in Oran and Algiers roots the story in real places rather than a stylised North African backdrop.
- Closing on Cheb Khaled ties today's pop audience to the generation that built raï — the bridge between generations the artist described.
- Cassette-era cover art makes the single itself an artifact of the culture Disco Maghreb created, so the promotion carries the memory.
What it did
The video drew more than 23 million views within days, reached the top of YouTube, and was shared by figures such as actor Omar Sy; the work earned a place in the D&AD Annual 2023 under Music Videos.
What you can take
When a pop hit borrows a lost institution's name, spend the video inside that institution's real world: the film becomes restitution, handing a forgotten label back to public memory.
Since then
Disco Maghreb became one of DJ Snake's landmark releases — the artist framed it as a love letter to his people — and the video is preserved in the D&AD Annual 2023 under Music Videos. Its deeper effect was memorial: a label and store that had fallen into oblivion returned to everyday conversation because a global pop moment chose to spend its own story on them.
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