I had a quick chat with Waqas — one of the members from Outlandish — on music, life and their upcoming projects.
Waqas: No problem. Appreciate it man.
Thank you very much. We are just doing our thing. Being born and raised in the West, our parents came from other countries, so we have a lot of things in the luggage with us, life experiences, which we can share. And, hip-hop for us was the right medium to bring forward that message somehow.
Actually no. Music is a lot of things, especially from the cultures we come from, when you’re born, you sing, when you’re happy you sing and when you’re sad you sing. Music and singing lyrics are a huge part of the world culture. I believe there should be enough room for everything; so, if someone wants to sing on how beautiful the sun is, so be it. If someone wants to speak up against oppression, then so be it as well. For us, it’s a mixture. We bring forward the message and it’s up to the listener to take it positively or negatively, absorb it and see if they can use it in something positive.
You know for some years, its been almost expected of us to do that, and we never like to go with what people expect of us. That is a very dangerous thing because you should do music for yourself and from your heart. I don’t do music to be disrespectful and I don’t do music for what people want to hear. Music is an emotion; that’s why we are different.
Regarding the responsibility, we know that there is a huge following of Outlandish and that people listen to what we say more than what the Black Eyed Peas or anyone else has to say, for example. Of course, that puts some pressure on us, but we tend to not give in to the pressure and instead, say whatever we feel like saying. I think that’s why people like what we do because we do what is not expected.
Basically, Denmark is our home for the good and the bad. It’s all we know. I am born and raised in Denmark; so, even when I travel to Pakistan, I feel Danish. Denmark is where Outlandish were formed, and I don’t think we would have been able to do that if we were living somewhere else since our upbringing there defined who we are today. It’s not ghetto, but you have a lot of different ethnic minorities living side by side. From one window, you can hear Somali music, 2Pac from the next and still another would be playing Arabic music. It is so diverse.
It comes from two things as everyone expects certain things from us. It reached a point that even the different media in Denmark expected us to be a certain way. For example, if you do a song on a certain topic, they expect you to do that every time. If you differ from that in opinion or expression, their whole world comes down and crashes and burns. But, at the end of the day, we are just three kids from suburb Copenhagen doing music. We can’t live up to your expectations; so it’s actually revolting against people’s expectations of us. You will fail them, no matter what you do, someway or the other. Expectations are never good, that’s one side of it. We actually have the track “Crash and Burn” that actually talks about that.
The other point is through the last four or five years, we were quite wrapped up in the whole industry part of music making — you know touring the world and all — and we kind of lost touch of each other somehow because we were very busy. You know we started out as friends, but we forgot to nourish the friendship somehow and got lost in the business side of it and forgot why we making music together. So, we sat down and had a chat about that and decided that we have to change the route and rebel against the routines we fall into, thus “Sound Of A Rebel” was chosen as the title.
Yeah of course, that’s their direction and that’s what labels do. They want to sell units, and if you’re a beautiful looking girl and can dance or whatever, they can push in a certain direction since of course, that’s what sells!
But, for us, we’re not girls and we’re not beautiful so we had to do something else and that’s how we started. That is why we got signed, and the record company saw that there wasn’t something like us before. There were groups with different ethnicities, but they never really spoke about it. We came in and changed that.
Yes, I did the production, but the guys said “it’s more pop, we like to mix the sweet with the sour and the opposite. Put a hard beat to sweet lyrics and vice-versa.”
Issam came across this poem written by a Palestinian teenager who is actually based in the US, which was called “Look Into My Eyes” where she was talking about how it is to grow up as a teenager in Palestine and all. It struck us as a beautiful poem — it wasn’t political — she was just saying stuff like I want to have fun, I want go to school, but I can’t do that because I have a huge tank outside my house and I can’t walk free, etc. She was more talking to me in a way, in my conscious.
Yes, it was crazy! We started off with the track “Amen, but we learned a lot during the making of this album to re-trust each other again. Somehow we were healed from the business side of the music industry.
No, but I have so many relatives there and Issam went to Haj a couple of years ago. Saudi Arabia is one of the places where we have a great following.
Of course, as a Muslim since I’ve been born, I’ve seen pictures of Makkah and Madinah, so that’s like a goal in life that one would do Haj. I would love to travel to Saudi Arabia. For me, it’s like fairytale land as it’s a far away place, but I would love to come for the experience.
Yeah! It’s part of our culture, it’s part of our religion and part of our upbringing mostly…and with me being Pakistani — I come from a Muslim family and Pakistanis especially are very spiritual — I talk about real life.
For us religion is spiritual, it is how you treat people, how you treat the environment, your ups and downs and struggles. All that is part of spirituality — it’s not black or white like some people want it to be.
Thank you very much for the appreciation. You guys bring the love and we keep doing music. It’s all about the support and hopefully one day we will be in Jeddah rocking it. Respect for having me on.
Salaaam.
