A pair years in the past, the Toronto musician Mustafa Ahmed, who goes by simply Mustafa, launched his debut challenge When Smoke Rises, which acquired shortlisted for a Polaris Prize and landed him on our checklist of the Greatest New Bands Of 2021. Right this moment, Mustafa has returned along with his first new solo single since then, “Identify Of God,” a mushy and tender one which sees him reflecting on his relationship with Islam and the dying of his brother, who was killed over the summer season.

“I by no means felt just like the Nubian prince my father seen in me by means of his tinted lens. I strive their dance, their prayer — I at all times fall quick,” Mustafa shared in a press release, persevering with:

& Gods title wasn’t at all times associated to magnificence for me, however to hopelessness, this Islam we share and Allah we name for whereas witnessing a relentless violence that continues to
bind us, I don’t suppose I ever felt utterly Muslim amongst different Muslims,

All these sub-beliefs like borders. My aunts in all their knowledge and narrowness-one Sufi spinning into remembrance, one refuting the taking of {a photograph}.

When my massive brother was killed in what is going to at all times really feel like yesterday, figuring out the suspected assassin was somebody he held as a buddy, somebody he prayed with- it led me to imagine that possibly his love was his finish? Possibly the place there isn’t any love, parting from love retains us alive? Possibly ending in love is the one technique to really start? I don’t know.
The one clear reminiscence from the times of his dying had been my mother and father reciting in unison, “oh Allah, we settle for his passing, we settle for what you ordained.”

I’m determined to like God like them.

Our religion and our hearts are too typically our demise- I do know a subject of younger niggas dreaming that may testify to this. For higher or worse we’ll uncover each bone beneath our hole laughter, our confused affection; possibly its revealed in our ultimate gasp for that means.

Till then.

Bismillah, Within the Identify of God, 10.17.23

Hear under.

“Identify Of God” is out now.