View this video on YouTube
Last year was a pretty big one for Canadian singer-songwriter Mustafa, even if it was relatively light on solo music. On top of contributions to recent Daniel Caesar and Metro Boomin releases, he also joined Caesar on stage in Toronto as part of the Superpowers Tour.
“Name Of God”—a meditation on Mustafa’s relationship with Islam and a tribute to his late brother, Mohamed—was his sole release last year (and the only drop since his 2021 album, When Smoke Rises). It was also billed as the first track to be taken from his second album, and although we don’t have a title or release date for it, we now have the second track: “Imaan”.
Influenced once more by his faith, this time how it relates to matters of the heart, “Imaan” takes in some slightly different influences: mixed in with his Sudanese-influenced sound, Mustafa adds some acoustic guitar licks influenced by American folk music. It also comes with a video directed by Mustafa Ahmed and Nabil Elderkin that stars Imaan Hammam and creative direction from American stand-up comedian, actor, screenwriter and director Ramy Youssef.
Speaking on the track, Mustafa says: “‘Imaan’ is a love song between two people in search of God and purpose. It’s about longing for all that we don’t have evidence of, two Muslims journeying through their love of borderless Western ideology and how it contradicts with the modesty and devotion in which they were raised. ‘Imaan’ sonically represents this tussle too; the Sudanese strings and Egyptian oud woven into the bed American folk chords and drums. This tapestry, this collision is the song, is the romance, is the person Mustafa is. How it’s never enough, or too much.”
He added that the song “sits in the grey that people of faith are afraid to live in, but identify with. It’s about the way faith swings beneath Mustafa and Imaan like a rope, how cultural tension and bias and racism can inform and dismember romance.”
Peep the visuals for “Imaan” above and be sure to add the song to your playlists.
