Rapseason and Manifesto present

Twenty-five year old singer/songwriter Mustafa Ahmed grew up fighting. He would do so firstly as a child growing up in Toronto’s Regent Park community, matching up with other children his age at the behest of the older kids from around the way. Somehow, it did not harden him. He would continue fighting, though now against stereotypes, as an adolescent poet dispelling notions of who Black Muslims from Regent Park were with every stanza of his continuously celebrated poetry. He would attempt to fight again, this time on behalf of his immediate community, as a member of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Youth Advisory Council, an effort that helped him realize his mission would be better served by amplifying the stories he’d collected over the years through song. And that is how we got Mustafa, child of Sudanese Muslim immigrants, one time Pan American Games Poet Laureate, cherished collaborator of acts like Majid Jordan, The Weeknd, and Khalid, and the artist whose debut project When Smoke Rises aims to exalt the Regent Park MC whose legacy Mustafa fights for now, Jahvante “Smoke Dawg” Smart.