Sudanese-American rapper Oddisee talks about music, family and the Sudan war

It’s Sunday lunchtime and I’m sitting there, ready to meet rapper and producer Oddisee. Just as I sit down, an email comes in from his agent telling me he might be a few minutes late because he just finished running a half marathon.

Intrigued by this unexpected turn of events, I frantically searched for “London Half Marathon June” in various ways, but found no relevant results.

Oddisee arrives just a few minutes after the agreed time and shows no sign of having broken a sweat in the slightest.

He explains that after his morning run, he still felt good even after several kilometers and decided to persevere and cover a distance that other runners might train for for months.

Fans of the rapper and producer, who was born in Washington, DC to an African-American mother and a Sudanese father, will not be surprised by such a remarkable achievement.

Except for a recent hiatus, he has released numerous albums and extended plays (EPs) and performs frequently. His London show was part of a tour spanning four continents and coincided with the release of his latest EP. Yet.

Oddisee’s musicality and discipline go back to his parents, he says The new Arab“I got my creativity from my mother; my business skills and work ethic from my father,” he says.

“I’m talking to my mom and she asks me about the lyrics. She calls me and says, ‘That was clever.’ And my dad asks, ‘How’s business?'”

His father’s pragmatism should not be confused with a lack of interest. Oddisee, born Amir El Khalifa, was raised largely by his father, and although his father had the same doubts as most immigrant parents when their child pursues a career in music, he was an enthusiastic supporter, even in difficult times.

The two are now physically thousands of miles apart. After living in the United States for about thirty years, Oddisee’s father moved to Sudan in 2007.

Since then, he has only returned to the United States twice; once to set up his Social Security account (which Call Babaa sketch about Oddisee’s 2020 EP The strange healing); the second time for his daughter’s wedding.

“If he could have combined these trips, he would have done so,” Oddisee tells me. “He had no interest in returning to the States.”

From war zones to world tours

His father’s determination to stay in Sudan remained strong even during a devastating war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has now raged for more than a year, killing thousands and displacing millions more.

He still lives in a block of flats he built on a plot of land in the city of Omdurman, just across the Nile from the capital Khartoum. It is the same building where Oddisee lived as a child during his summers in Sudan.

While the army tried to drive the RSF out of the area, his father offered shelter in the building to people fleeing the fighting. When water became scarce, he had an additional well dug and used his generator so that people in the area had access to electricity.

The Sudanese army recognized the building as a place of refuge and a strategic location and set up a cordon around it. They “used the building to fight the insurgency, to drive out the paramilitaries and to send aid and take care of the people in that neighborhood,” says Oddisee.

As the home became a focal point of the war, communications failures left parts of Sudan without connection to the outside world for unbearably long periods of time.

Oddisee and his family did not hear from his father for months. Only through a soldier did he have brief and precious internet access and was able to speak to his family much earlier than other Sudanese and tell his son: “I’m fine.”

Oddisee’s father survived through his fighting spirit, but also through sheer luck; he narrowly escaped death several times.

“He was hit by a shrapnel from a bomb that exploded and killed four soldiers. The shrapnel hit his leg and hand. His brother’s house next door was destroyed, but his was not. He is armed – my father is not playing. He is surviving, he is surviving.”

While his father is stuck in Sudan, Oddisee is free to travel the world and do what he loves. He has a wife and two young children living in New York. But he also carries some of the weight of the world.

“I see what’s going on in Gaza, Sudan, Congo and Haiti. I struggle with this duality of constant guilt and I think I can balance that guilt by reminding myself to be grateful for what I have.”

From the difficult experiences of his childhood to today, it is art and music that help him deal with these difficult emotions.

In his teenage years, his creative expression through drawing and illustration gave way to music-making. Even though the medium changed, the therapeutic power remained.

“When I went through those times, I always did something creative to get out of it,” he said.

“Fast forward, it’s still like that. In the worst times I find myself in, I go in and make music.”

Guilt, gratitude and anger stand side by side in Yet. In World on firehe deals with the challenges of fatherhood in the midst of global conflict and criticizes hypocritical politicians who support and then condemn warlords; in the very next song, Thankful forcelebrates triumph over inner demons and is so infectiously cheerful that it’s almost impossible to sit still.

Global sounds, local roots

While his connection to Sudan is evident in his lyrics, his beats and production have always been rooted in the sound of East Coast hip-hop, particularly the sound of the DC, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) tri-state region.

He says he doesn’t feel the need to add obviously Sudanese sounds to this music.

“I was introduced to this American genre in an American city, so I think it would be a huge departure if I were to just Sudanise this East Coast upbringing and this East Coast music. That would take a lot of thought,” he says.

Instead, he chooses to introduce that influence in more subtle ways—ways that a general audience might miss but Sudanese listeners can perceive.

“In Thankful forthe syncopation of the drums was Sudanese. The bass line was Afrobeat. The guitar was Congolese. The clapping was Gnawa,” he reveals.

“I pay homage in the strangest, most peculiar, most nuanced way possible, along the lines of ‘if you know, you know.'”

Shahla Omar is a freelance journalist based in London. She was previously a staff journalist and news editor at The New Arab