The rapper was born in 1986 in communist Lithuania, but her family moved to what was then Czechoslovakia when she was a toddler. When her father, a journalist and lawyer, came under pressure there because of his far-left politics, the family fled to Kiruna, Sweden’s northernmost city, which she described as “very cold” and “with no people of color.” After the family relocated to Stockholm, Imam attended a school in the suburbs where she said there were “neo-Nazis and immigrants, and nothing in between.”

A longtime fan of the Fugees and Kanye West, she started performing while completing her degree in English and psychology at the University of Stockholm. Her anger at the far right was galvanized in 2013, when Jimmie Akesson, the leader of the Sweden Democrats, retweeted a photo of her performing at a protest against the far right while wearing a jacket bearing a crossed-out “S.D.,” the party’s initials. The song she performed included the line, “send the pigs to slaughter,” referring to members of the party. Afterward, she received threats from his supporters. “He knew what he was doing. He knew what kinds of followers he had,” she said.

The debate around refugees in Sweden, she argued, has become untethered from reality. “The claim that we can’t afford the refugees isn’t fact-based,” Imam said. Tax avoidance by large companies was a bigger drain on the economy, she added.