You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh, your way.

Mustafa is a singer, songwriter, and poet from Toronto. He gained national recognition in Canada for his poetry.

In 2016, he served on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Youth Advisory Council. As a songwriter, he contributed to the Grammy award-winning album, Starboy by the Weekend, and his written songs for Usher, Camila Cabello, and others.

In May 2021, he released his own debut album, called When Smoke Rises, inspired by his experiences losing friends to inner city violence.

His album has been critically acclaimed, and it was shortlisted for the Polaris Prize. I spoke to Mustafa about his song Air Forces.

It's track he made with his longtime collaborator, Grammy-winning producer Frank Dukes, plus Swedish artist Simon on the Moon, and Jamie X X.

Here's Mustafa on Song Exploder.

My name is Mustafa Ahmed. I was raised in Regent Park. It's the first and largest housing project in Canada. It's right at the centre of downtown Toronto, a short walk away from the busiest intersection in Canada.

It's a community like any conventional hood. There's like systemic barriers, education barriers, not a lot of open roads, but that made for the closeness of community that you just didn't get elsewhere.

My life before the record was incredibly immersed in how I was going to preserve the stories of my community, and I remember when Air Forces came to me. I was editing this short film on violence in the city, and I interviewed people from communities that we have been at war with for years, and communities that are practically mirrors of mine.

People just like me that are experiencing the same kind of grief that I'm experiencing, but it was hard for me to familiarize with them at all, because of this territorial warfare.

But what happened was when I was working on the short film, I interviewed people, and I was able to ask them a simple question of how they want to be remembered when they're no longer here and how they want their friends to be remembered.

I just wanted to remember me by like my brother's keeper, like you know what I mean? I'm always somebody that is going to be there for the next matter, and be there for my sister, be there for my mother.

I want to be remembered as somebody that left the good mark on them, not just the negative vibe, just something that they can take from and say you know what at least he achieved, something that we can have, and it's longer than him.

And I was looking at like the faces and the interviews of people from communities like mine looking at their softness and their sensitivity coming out as they answer the question of how they want to be remembered.

And in that I found a kind of empathy, you know, that I think I was bereft of, and a lot of the rage that I felt and the frustrations I felt about the system, and about other people that have inflicted harm on my community.

When that rage started to dissipate, that's when I was able to approach that song.

I actually have the original Air Force's vocal recording that I recorded on my phone.

I remember sad in the studio with my friend Simon Hezman.

We were listening to a lot of Nick Drake just trying to like immerse myself in folk songs that I loved.

After that we just started like writing chords.

The first thing that came to me was don't crease your Air Forces just stay inside tonight.

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