SoundCloud to city hall: Zohran Mamdani, ex-rapper on his way to becoming NYC’s first Muslim mayor

Long before policy debates and campaign rallies, Mamdani was making music videos in Jackson Heights, rapping under the aliases Young Cardamom and Mr Cardamom. His breakout track, Nani, a tribute to his activist grandmother Praveen Nair, was released in 2019 and featured the iconic Madhur Jaffrey. The song, shot amid the bustle of Queens’ food stalls, has resurfaced in a big way, racking up over 2,79,000 views on YouTube in recent days.

But Mamdani’s first notable fame came even earlier. In 2016, his track “1 Spice,” produced with childhood friend Abdul Car Hussein aka HAB, landed in the opening credits of Disney’s Queen of Katwe, a film directed by his mother Mira Nair who is known to be a filmmaker. The track, rich in flavor and rhythm, is a nod to his Ugandan-Indian roots and now it’s echoing through campaign rallies.

According to USA Today, “I’m running on a very simple message,” Mamdani joked in a recent appearance on Kutti Gang, a South Asian comedy show in NYC. “It’s not about being on SoundCloud, though respect. Every brown boy lived on SoundCloud at one point,” he stated.

Between music gigs, Mamdani worked as a foreclosure prevention housing counselor in Queens, a role that involved battling banks and helping working class families keep their homes. “It was in those offices, watching people lose everything, that I realized the housing crisis was not inevitable, it was political,” he said.

In 2020, Mamdani unseated a four term incumbent to become the first South Asian man elected to the New York State Assembly. Just five years later, he now stands on the point of leading America’s largest city.

In his victory speech on Wednesday morning, Mamdani struck a tone of urgency and optimism. “I will fight for a city that works for you, that is affordable for you, that is safe for you. We can be free and we can be fed. We can demand what we deserve.”