The secret life of Mustafa

It’s a record that forces the 27-year-old to share his direct and confessional artworks with unknown outsiders. Something that once belonged to no-one but him alone, is about to be given to the world.

Translated from Arabic, Dunya means “the world in all its flaws.” It’s a startling debut, informed by Mustafa Ahmed’s upbringing in Toronto, the chosen family who shaped his early years, and the art of poetry, which he practised publicly while keeping his melodic talents in the shadows. It wasn’t until the release of his 2021 record When Smoke Rises, that the young writer, formerly known as Mustafa the Poet, began to share his words with a delicate musicality.

When Smoke Rises won Alternative Album of the Year at the Juno Awards in 2022. In his acceptance speech, Mustafa said, “As they were breaking down my community, I realised in that moment that the only people that were going to be able to document the memories of my friends were the people that knew them. I watched Canadian publications announce the deaths of my friends using mugshots, descriptors being dated criminal records, and I knew then that I had to rewrite their memories. I’m not gonna speak about how I’m the first black Muslim to get this award. I think that being the first of anything should now be critiqued more than celebrated.”

During the ceremony, he performed a stark, stripped back rendition of album highlight “Stay Alive,” bringing out the members of Halal Gang, the hip-hop collective established in Regent Park, the Toronto neighbourhood Mustafa was raised in and spoke about during his acceptance speech. It was an electric performance, and one that only further elevated his profile as a rising musician and activist.

Regent Park is an area to the East of Downtown Toronto that was originally built as a public housing project. In recent years it has experienced accelerated gentrification, displacing the local communities and changing the social structure of the neighbourhood. “They'll have transformed the community entirely by the end of probably next year,” says Mustafa. “I grew up on the South side of Regent Park, all that I grew up in, all that I remember of it, it's all no longer. There used to be a police station and a fire station on my street, because other neighbourhoods had the kind of agency to say that they don't want a police station or a fire station on their street. But of course, because it's government subsidised housing we just didn't have the same kind of sovereignty that other neighbourhoods and other class systems had. So we were subjected to that, to those neighbours, but we found a way with it.”

The influence and impact of Mustafa’s upbringing in Regent Park echoes throughout Dunya, from the camaraderie of his friends in Halal Gang, to the loss of his brothers, the closeness of community and the distance he felt once it was lost.

In 2019 he produced the short film Remember Me, Toronto. As homicide rates rose in the city, he brought together members of rival communities, including himself and Drake, to discuss the gun violence and loss. An impactful and striking film, it highlighted a side of the discussion that’s often overlooked and omitted.

In his teenage years, Mustafa excelled as a young poet. Inspired and encouraged by his elder sister, it was a way for him to discuss the troubles he experienced. It also allowed him to reflect on her approach to the community and world around her, a set of ethics that motivates his activism. “I've been going to protests for Palestinian Liberation and attending events for Doctors Without Borders, or protesting the deaths of young people in inner city communities and I think my sister made me active in that way,” he says. “From when I was really young she used to run an orphan sponsorship program and I would go with her to the campus of Ryerson University to hear some of the accounts of different children who were being sponsored. There's a thing that once you learn it, you can't unknow it again, and I think that knowing came to me early by way of my sister and then that thrusted me into wanting to speak about social justice.”

His first break into the world of poetry came when he was twelve. He performed his poem “A Single Rose” to camera, laying bare the injustices and disparities within the world around him. It was shown at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in 2009, earning him a standing ovation.

In 2015 he was chosen as the poet laureate for the Pan American Games, which were being held that year in Toronto. It threw Mustafa into the spotlight, with press and TV appearances showcasing his poetry. “I was really young and it was flawed,” he says. “I would sit there and I would try to write and it was really difficult. I just didn't know how inspiration worked. No one told me. Sometimes I have to force the words and that never felt really good to me. So I was too young to understand the structure of inspiration and flow state and truth, and I'm glad that I got a grip on that later on.”

Poetry wasn’t just a passion or a vessel for Mustafa to express himself, it was an artform that was considered acceptable. Growing up in a conservative Muslim family, his parents didn’t listen to music or believe in the use of musical instruments. “My dad was vehemently against me being a musician, and I knew that already so I didn't even bother,” he says. “I think doing poetry for all those years was the closest way for me to express myself without having to have the daunting discourse around music's impermissibility in Islam. I do love Islam and I consider myself to have a deep connection with the faith. I found an alternative, minority opinion about music being permissible, just depending on what you choose to discuss in the music. I knew that in my heart I never discussed things that were in vain, and that I wanted to try to alter people positively with the music. But even still my parents until this day are against the use of music, and I understand. That’s the thing they grew up in. I’m met with a lot of that criticism by the larger conservative Muslim community in the world, so I’m always dealing with that kind of resistance.”

Even with the knowledge that his family wouldn’t approve, Mustafa engaged with music in secret, both in and outside of school. He found a local vocal coach and would take lessons without his family or friends’ knowledge. “She put me on to Joni Mitchell when I was fifteen years old,” he says. “She played me Blue, the album, and I thought, ‘Oh my God.’”

Alongside his growing love of folk music, Mustafa was closely associated with Halal Gang whose music was beginning to pick up notoriety both around Toronto and internationally. Smoke Dawg, who was killed in 2018, was a guest of A$AP Ferg on his 2016 Toronto tour date, while with Puffy L’z, they released a Fire In The Booth a year later. Despite his deep friendship with the collective’s members, Mustafa was never an outright member himself. “It wasn't like I was rapping with them or whatever, but these were the guys that I grew up with so I was around them,” he says. “When I started the poetry thing, they were kind of oblivious to what the hell I was doing, but they were like, this is our boy and we're all in it together. I believe in gangs. I think we’ve vilified the structure of gang affiliation. The truth is, for a lot of people it kept them alive. I was a young and vulnerable person. I'm deeply grateful for Halal Gang and the members in it because we had each other. In what world could I trust a policing system? I was watching them steal and be crooked from when I was child. I knew that they weren't there to protect or serve my community. By the time we were ten-years-old, there were already people in our community being murdered by police officers and we were lost and you couldn't navigate it alone.”

Just as gang culture was vilified in right-wing press and politics, so too was the music they were making. “I enjoy the music. I'll listen to drill music. I listen to it because it is like a mirror of what I know and what I understood, and it's like the music is an additive but it is not one of the pillars that's going to change what happens in these communities systemically,” he says. “When people point at the music they're like, ‘The music needs to change, influencing the kids.’ I'm like no, the education system is. It's the design of housing projects that is not allowing people to grow in any substantial way.”

At the age of eighteen, Mustafa quietly found the courage to begin writing songs, keeping them to himself. It wasn’t until Drake posted about him that he began to feel the spotlight of expectation. “I remember going to the community centre the morning after and everyone's like, ‘Man, that's a big deal. What are you gonna do about that?’” he says. “I was like, ‘I don't know.’ I was still in high school at the time, but then that kind of platformed me in some capacity and I was able to have discussions with other friends who are now very close to me.”

One of those friends was Canadian singer-songwriter Daniel Caesar, who in 2015 was also beginning to gain notoriety with the release of his second EP, Pilgrim’s Paradise. Together, the pair began to meet up and explore their way around the art of writing, supporting each other’s efforts. “Slowly I was developing a community for myself outside of the hood and it almost felt like my little secret,” says Mustafa. “It breaks my heart to grieve that, because there was a time in my life where that was something that was for me. There was a doorway that only I knew of and I would go through it to try to make sense of the world around me, to try to colour it in. Then it got monopolised. Until now, when someone asks me about my music, I find it really invasive. I hope that doesn't sound pretentious in any way, but it just makes me really uncomfortable because I don't want to discuss that. Because in some alternate place, it is still very much a secret of mine. I know that kind of clashes with wanting to promote a record or wanting to do the things that help me sustain, but I want to be among my friends and my peers without having to discuss the music at all.”

He was introduced to Canadian producer Frank Dukes, known for his work with the likes of Lorde, Post Malone and The Weeknd. While Mustafa had made a name for himself through his poetry, Dukes saw a greater potential. “He believed in me,” he says. “I would tell Frank, ‘You can't play anyone the music.’ I remember, he would quietly play it for people that I really enjoyed the company of and I was just like, bro, I don't want to play for anyone, even people that I really love, because I was nervous about it. I had a real debilitating relationship with my work.”

Together, they wrote a string of hits including “Attention” for The Weeknd and “Monster” for Justin Beiber and Shawn Mendes. Despite the success, Mustafa believes that Duke’s initial offer of collaboration and mentorship came from a place of care and support. “I think that Frank was seeing the doom that I grew up in. So many people that would drop me off to his house or people that he’d met, so many of them were murdered. Every single time it felt closer and closer to me and he couldn't make sense of it himself and I think that he felt a responsibility to be present for me,” he says. “I think he was honestly working with me just because he didn't want me to succumb to the same system that was taking the lives of my friends. So he stuck by me. It was easier for me to assist other people in their journeys than it was to face my own life.”

The turning point in Mustafa’s career came when he met his manager, Mattis With from record label Young (The XX, Sampha). With pushed him to focus on his own artistry, only offering his representation if Mustafa stopped working as a writer. “I hated song writing. I did it because I needed to survive and I wanted to sustain but I was working with music that wasn't moving me,” he says. “Mattis told me, ‘If you're gonna songwrite, I can't work with you. But if you're going to choose to be an artist and you're gonna dedicate to your path as an artist, I'll stay with you and I'll continue to work with you.’ I think I needed to hear someone make a statement like that. It actually just encouraged me because I think in that moment, I never felt so empowered because he was telling me that he cared more about my perspective than he did about me working with pop stars on their perspectives. I think that I needed someone that I respected to believe in me in that way, and he believed in me.”

Through Young, Mustafa met James Blake and Jamie xx, who alongside Dukes, produced When Smoke Rises. Most of the tracks on the record were co-written or produced with Simon Hessman, who also features heavily across Dunya. “We both had a deep love for American folk music,” says Mustafa. “He's honestly one of my closest friends and he's a really beautiful human being and I’ve always felt so safe in this company. A lot of the songs I began with him because I felt safe with him.”

On Dunya, Mustafa has created a record that feels alive in its own world. The dark imagery and themes he relives juxtapose with the delicate and warm tapestry of organic instrumentation. From the directness of his songwriting to the inventiveness of his musicality, it’s an arresting listen.

Dunya’s credits are even more star-studded than its predecessor, but alongside the big names are artists that Mustafa chose with sentiment and intention. Similarly with the instrumentation, he chose to reflect his own heritage with traditional East African strings and interpolations of samples and melodies that held weight and meaning.

One of the first tracks Mustafa wrote for the record was the atmospheric ode “I’ll Go Anywhere.” Rich in musicality, the orchestration fades out, isolating Mustafa’s tender vocal mid-song as he drops the lyric, “And you know I was always ashamed. Not prepared for his trial or my trials in the grave.” It’s an impactful, sombre moment in an otherwise elegantly layered song.

Written on a trip with Hessman to Egypt, the pair started work on the early foundations of what would become Dunya. “It does feel like our time in Egypt, which is beautiful,” says Mustafa. “We wrote so much music there but the thing that actually ended up surviving and making the record was about three or four songs.”

The track also contains an interpolation of a melody he remembers from childhood. “My parents didn’t listen to music growing up. There's Arabic music and those influences, I had aunts and uncles that were listening,” he explains. “I knew it was present and when I would go back home as a child and listen, I think that it was in me, and it was of me, and I just had to activate it.”

Joining him on vocals on “I’ll Go Anywhere” is Rosalía, a partnership that came about from a simple DM. “We've met before and she supported the last record so much. ‘Stay Alive,’ she really loved it and she was really supportive of me and my artist journey, so I knew she cared,” Mustafa says. “I was like, ‘I'd love for you to come hear it and maybe work on something.’ She's like, ‘Yes, I'd love to do that.’ I was really grateful that she was around.”

Album closer, “Noori” is a stark and emotively raw finale, drawing together the deep themes of loss, religion and the questioning that echoes through the record. Alongside a delicate guitar line are the strings of an oud, performed by Egyptian musician Tarek Elazhary. “He's someone who we played with in Egypt,” says Mustafa. “We found him through the Cairo Jazz Bar and we had him come by our house and he played for a long time. It was really beautiful.”

Most of the writing of Dunya took place between London and Sweden. The transient nature of the album’s sessions stemmed from Mustafa’s departure from Toronto, the context of the city changed for him in grief. “I don't really have a sense of home,” he says. “I couldn't write in my home so I was honestly just searching for places that I felt comfortable, and I didn't feel entirely connected to any place, so I just kept moving.”

That sentiment is laid bare on “Leaving Toronto,” a confessional cut of heart-rending folk. “I’m leaving Toronto, if it ever lets me go,” he sings. Joined by Caesar on backing vocals, the track also features additional production from Scum, the American producer and songwriter best known for his work with SZA, Rihanna and Kendrick Lamar. “He's an amazing producer,” says Mustafa. “He's really prolific, really amazing and I've always been a fan of his.”

Mustafa’s brother Mohamed, passed away a year ago, the victim of a daytime shooting. His death has some uncomfortable connections within the album. “This record was completed before my brother passed,” says Mustafa. “It's funny because you listen to ‘Leaving Toronto’ and what I'm saying; ‘Make sure they bury me next to my brother.’ I wrote that two years ago, but I was talking about so many brothers, not by blood, who I lost. But of course now you hear that song, and I did leave Toronto, and I did vow not to return after my brother passed, and I think that is a wild thing. Of course, I did feel those things in some way before he passed, but it's almost like all the truths of the record started to become larger and larger as time went by.”

Another track that echoes with parallels is “What Happened, Mohamed,” a delicate, imagery-rich narrative that flows in warm, encapsulating production. One of the many producers to help bring Mustafa’s raw demos to life was Dylan Wiggins. “Dylan is one of my best friends. I’ve known him for a decade and he's a really beautiful person. I felt very privileged to work with him on this song,” says Mustafa.

Although it feels obvious to attribute the song’s subject to Mustafa’s late brother, it’s actually the story of a broken friendship, never repaired. “It was wild because he also has the same name as my brother,” says Mustafa. “When I started completing the song, I realised that a lot of it could have felt like a parallel of me asking what happened to him. There's so many deaths in the community and there's so much missing and there's so much grievance that these things become conflated in a way, to me. Having the privilege of just losing a few people in this life is something that I don't know anymore. I was telling my friend that. I was like, to just have ritual with one person or two people or three people who died is so beautiful, but I think that a community like mine, that ritual was stripped of us because there's too many people.”

The conflation of subjects on Dunya peaks on the hard-hitting “Gaza is Calling.” Written about a close friend of Mustafa’s who moved to Toronto from Gaza as a child, the song has in recent months taken on a new meaning, although it was written three years ago.

Mustafa released the single in June. The video, starring Bella Hadid and MC Abdul was directed by Hiam Abbass and Sakir Khader, and produced by Hadid, Mustafa and Ramy Youssef. It was released as a fundraiser with net proceeds going to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. “I was working on that for two years. We filmed that before October seventh. Everything related to that song was completed prior to all these events. I didn't make it in response to everything that's happening,” he says. “I think for so much of my life, I think I've had to deal and tussle with the events transforming the likeness or the context of my music and so I just leave it to God because there’s not much I can do in the face of that.”

Alongside the video, Mustafa has held benefit concerts for Gaza and Sudan, bringing together artists such as Caesar, Stormzy, Charlotte Day Wilson and Blood Orange. The most recent of his Artists For Aid series was in London, in collaboration with War Child UK. “I think I'm still kind of recovering from it,” he smiles. “It was a lot to organise, but it was beautiful. I really enjoyed it. I think I was just grateful that all those artists were able to come together and come together for a thing like this. It meant a lot to me.”

Two other acts who supported Mustafa in his fundraising were Clairo and Nicholas Jaar, both of whom appear on Dunya. Opening track “Name of God,” has the instant atmosphere of Sufjan Stevens in his most striking intimacy, a glowing and sombre rush of acoustic guitars and Mustafa’s soft vocals. The track ends with a voice note, a conversation with his cousin. “I was making impulsive decisions as time was moving,” he says. “Nicholas Jaar is the reason that outro’s like that, because he actually heard the voice note of my cousin speaking and he said, you should put that in the song. It was such a perfect decision.”

The pair had originally met after Mustafa performed at Primavera festival. “It was a horrifying experience, but somehow Nicholas Jaar was in a very small crowd of people that came to see me,” he says. “He came and he was really moved by my performance. He was following me at the time and I asked if he wanted to have dinner with me and he agreed. I thought he was one of the most beautiful people I'd ever met. He has such a quality to him, like this magic. It's inescapable. I just wanted to be around him. I asked if he’d be open to working with me completing some songs and he was careful and he said that he would be open to the idea. And so we began working and sending songs back and forth. Eventually I went to Barcelona to do a day or two with him there and that felt really good.”

The penultimate track on Dunya, “Hope is a Knife,” is a duet between Mustafa and Clairo, which she co-produced with Young-affiliated Scottish producer Rodaidh McDonald, who also mixed the record. “He's a great finisher and a great person to just have in the room. He's super motivating, so I've always enjoyed him and his company,” says Mustafa. “The songs were nearly done, but he was able to just tie them all together in a way that felt visceral. He also has a deep understanding of the path and I couldn’t have done it without him.”

Mustafa met Clairo at New York’s Electric Lady Studios while he was working on the record, and the pair became quick friends. On “Hope is a Knife” their vocals intertwine atop a luscious bed of piano and flute. “She's a perfect person,” he says. “I'm glad that her voice is on there and she kind of produced that song by herself. It's her playing piano and it's her on those air instruments. I'm really glad she did that.”

Another key player and producer across Dunya is The National's Aaron Dessner. Recently rushed into public stardom for his work with the likes of Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran, across the record you can feel his early influence and style compliment the folk-leanings of Mustafa, bringing a Big Red Machine beauty and atmosphere to many of the tracks. “I think he's such an amazing player,” says Mustafa. “What a guitarist that man is. He’s worked with Sufjan Stevens and across the board with musicians that I have a deep, deep love for. I knew that at the end of the day, a lot of the musicians he works with currently, they are what they are and their perspective is what it is, and I just knew that if I was working with him it would feel entirely different.”

Mustafa had most of the songs fully formed before he began to work on the album’s production. On a trip to Dessner’s infamous Long Pond studio, he began to work on building the textures and arrangements of the tracks. “After I did that, there were some songs that I still wanted to dial in and that's when Nicolas came and dialled in ‘I'll Go Anywhere’ and ‘Gaza is Calling’ and we still maintained some of the elements that Aaron brought forward,” he says. “They kind of all went through their own journeys, these songs.”

Recent single “Imaan” brings together Dessner, Hessman and McDonald to create a track that blends American folk with East African arrangements, featuring a string sample from a Sudanese singer. The track also features Swedish singer-songwriter Snoh Alegra on backing vocals. “She's a really, really close friend of mine,” says Mustafa. “Just having someone really close to me on there... She heard that song and she was like, ‘I would love to sing on this.’”

One of the album’s standout moments is “SNL,” a nostalgic rush of sepia lyrics, hindsight and poetic sentiment, cast across a deep but delicate beat. Featuring on the track with Mustafa is American rapper JID, with an intro from Halal Gang rapper and singer Puffy L’z. “He's one of the main Halal Gang members. He's the centre of it. He's one of the people I'm talking to on there,” says Mustafa. “I feel really privileged that he's still here with us, cuz so many of my friends who maybe I would have had on the record, they’re not around. It’s nice to have someone like Puffy still here to recount these people and their memories with me.”

Loaded with personal sentiment, close collaborators, realised truths and heavy memories, Dunya is a record that deserves to be handled with care. What was once a tightly kept secret is now being released into the world, to be held, interpreted and valued by unknown minds. For Mustafa, it means his connection with his music is constantly in flux. “When something is out in the world and I don't have responsibility to continue to corner it, I think in that moment, I'll be able to know my relationship with it again,” he says. “In the midst of this release, and these kinds of conversations, it just makes me feel so transitional. Eventually when it finds its space in the world, then I'll know what it is to me again.”

Mustafa’s secret is now ours to keep.