Before I meet Palestinian hip-hop’s new wave, I hear them everywhere. Al Nather’s sleek productions pump out of car speakers in the Jordanian desert, and Shabjdeed’s raps tumble from the bars of Haifa. And, of course, you hear it all in their home – the tumultuous city of Ramallah.

On the road to their studio, near the de facto Palestinian capital, we twist through terraced hills of olive trees. The stark wall separating Israel from the West Bank looms over the horizon. Shabjdeed’s lyrics are evidently informed by the conflict between the countries: one song expresses his fury at being held for hours at a military checkpoint. Yet, when I ask in the studio about politics, he bristles, reciting a common question he is asked: “How does it feel to live under occupation?”

This doesn’t make sense to him: he has never known anything else. “I was born here. We’re used to it. They [Israeli soldiers] could come here, start shooting, and we wouldn’t even stop the interview. It’s like traffic in London; it’s very upsetting, but we don’t ask, ‘How does it feel to live in traffic?’”

Their collective BLTNM is just one outpost in the Arab world for hip-hop, a people’s music that has stretched far beyond its US origins. Rap soundtracked the 2011 revolution in Tunisia and has a long history in neighbouring Algeria. Recently, Atlanta trap has inspired rappers in Morocco, Tunisia and Jordan, where the smooth accessibility of trap beats is paired with hyperlocal lyrics.

Few places in the region have a hip-hop heritage as rich as Palestine’s. Their first stars were DAM, a group from the city of Lod, which had high levels of poverty and crime like the genre’s original home of the Bronx, New York. DAM’s 2001 hit Meen Erhabi? (Who’s the Terrorist?) was a white-hot tirade against systemic injustice that catapulted the genre into the spotlight.

Soon afterwards another group, Ramallah Underground, emerged as an answer in the West Bank. Mohammad Masrouji, 26, AKA Al Nather, was inspired by them as a teenager and later co-founded the experimental Saleb Wahed collective, the core of the second generation of Palestinian hip-hop. Their productions reached into jazz, grime and avant-garde sounds, while political lyrics dissolved into abstract poetry.

Shabjdeed, a 24-year-old rapper, obsessed over Saleb Wahed tracks. “I memorised every syllable, every ad lib, every snare,” he recalls. In 2016, he asked Masrouji to make a beat for him to try rapping, and before long they were feverishly making tracks in the studio, writing songs in a few hours and recording them on the spot.

You can hear Shabjdeed’s hyperactivity in his raps, a constant overflow of words that fills every corner of a track, with earworm choruses repeating like a broken record. Where DAM cited 2Pac as a key inspiration, these two worship Young Thug and Future. Masrouji’s production is a blend of throaty bass rumbles, twinkling keys and percussion that ticks, rolls and swerves restlessly.

Instead of building up to a first album, they released a track online each week, riding shifting listening habits in the West Bank, where Israel did not permit 3G access until January 2018. They named themselves BLTNM. Pronounced “blatinum”, it is a reference to Dubai music institution Platinum Records, the swapped consonant a joke about Shabjdeed’s accent – there is no “p” sound in Arabic.

The group’s branding is ultra-professional thanks to 21-year-old creative director Ahmad Zaghmouri, AKA Shab Mouri. “I want it to be clear this is an official brand, not just a group of friends or a crew,” he says. Aimed at ensuring longevity, it might also be a desire for legitimacy, to prove that Palestinians can run a professional operation despite restrictions.

‘We need freedom to dance the way we wanna dance’ … from left, Al Nather, Shabjdeed and Shab Mouri. Photograph: Siko Tatour

These take many forms. Despite a strong artistic scene in the West Bank, there are few promoters, managers or venues. It is difficult to put on parties, which have to finish at midnight and may be cancelled arbitrarily. Few artists can make a living from their music, except through funding, which, Masrouji explains, tends to be allocated to more traditional artists who “don’t distort anyone’s comfortable image of Palestinian culture”.

Nevertheless, the team have major ambitions. Shabjdeed and Al Nather’s compelling debut album, Sindibad el Ward, is due this month; Zaghmouri wants to use their rapid ascent as an example to offer artists management through the BLTNM label. What’s the ultimate goal? “You write ‘Arabic music’ on Google, and we come up,” Shabjdeed deadpans.

“It’s very easy to sell being Palestinian,” he continues, miming wearing a keffiyeh scarf and holding a flag. Culture can give outsiders perspective on Palestinians, defining them beyond the conflict. But BLTNM aren’t making music as some kind of righteous mission. Their music is for art, for fun, for getting wasted. There’s something subversive in that, considering how often the media shoehorns Palestinian artists into a simplified narrative of cultural resistance.

“You don’t have to be occupied to make a hit song,” says Masrouji. “There might be a connection between the occupation and some of our verses, but we’re also inspired by daily life, the market, the energy in downtown Ramallah.”

The others nod. “We need a break from everything, not just the occupation,” says Zaghmouri. “We need freedom of speech, freedom to dance the way we wanna dance. Freedom to just be us.”

• Sindibad el Ward is out on 23 August.