On May 17, 2012 The New York Times’ World News Middle East Section published an article entitled “Rap Group at the Leading Edge of the Egyptian Rebellion.” The article followed Alexandria’s rap group Revolution Records and claimed that rap is “shaping a new identity for Egyptian youth, of defiance and commitment to change.” It was with this idea in mind that I set out to do eight months of fieldwork with rappers in Alexandria and Cairo, Egypt from January-August 2013. My informants, however, noted that the political importance of revolutionary Egyptian rap emphasized in Western news outlets is surprising to most Egyptian rappers. Meanwhile, the American, Danish, British, and other Western cultural diplomacy efforts targeting Egypt post-2011 have dealt heavily in rap. Egyptian rappers, meanwhile, are skeptical of the power that international actors attribute to Egyptian rap and note that domestic rap audiences are meager. Even so, a narrative narrowly focused on the revolutionary power of Egyptian rap continues in diplomacy and media production circles. Why has this revolution-via-rap narrative persisted? What is there to lose from admitting that Egyptian revolutionary rap has not been significant in Egyptian politics? These are the questions that I will address in this paper. Drawing heavily on the work of Aidi Hisham, Ted Swedenburg, and Jessica Winegar, I will argue that producing rap-focused cultural diplomacy projects and media specials constitutes a form of neo-Orientalism that reifies a simplistic, factually incorrect public understanding of the Egyptian uprisings. A focus on rappers as ultimate revolutionaries is advantageous to international political interests because it helps foreign governments claim an understanding of the uprisings; This understanding disproportionately credits “disaffected youth.” Despite rappers’ refutation of this misplaced notion which portrays them as heroes and representative voices of the Egyptian uprisings, the benefits that this discourse provides international actors make discursive change unlikely.