It's the sound of young America. I'm Jesse Thorn. Picture a rapper. Now he's a

Muslim. He's from Minnesota. He's white. He's an albino. Maybe that's not what

you expected, but my guest brother Ali is that rapper and he still manages to

find expectations to defy. Ali's new EP, the truth is here like his previous

work, is a raw document about family, faith, and seeking happiness in tough

times. I'm so happy to have him on the show. Ali, welcome to the Sound of Young

America. Thank you, Jesse. Thanks for having me, man. Something I feel like I've

only gotten a hazy picture of in reading about you and listening to your work.

Just a sort of little snippets here and there is your childhood. It sounds like

you had one of those childhoods where you were a million different places

moving all the time. I basically got to live in a lot of different types of

situations as a child. I was born in Madison, Wisconsin and I moved away from

there when I was a little kid. I don't really remember living there and that I

lived in little towns throughout Michigan. You know, just even switching from one

side of town to the other, from the city to the suburbs or back and forth

within those cities, you know, kept us pretty much moving around every year

or two. And then when I was 15, I moved to Minneapolis. I just say my family moved

to Minneapolis and that's where I really feel like I came into my own and that's

where I settled and, you know, I'm 30 now, so that's, you know, half my life and

this is, this is home to me because it's the only place I've ever had roots.

It's tough for anybody to as a kid be in a new place all the time. It must have

been very difficult for you, especially as an albino, to just go into every

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