“I love hip-hop the most,” says Nadim Azzam, “but people seem to like when I sing.”
Azzam, an Ann Arbor musician who describes his sound as “alternative soul,” performs with a collection of Detroit-based musicians who grew up playing gospel. As influences, he cites acts as varied as Tyler, the Creator; the Red Hot Chili Peppers; and Kendrick Lamar.
“I try to absorb a little bit of something from every genre that I listen to. It’s all just good music,” he says.
In 2016, Azzam’s career received a jump start when he embarked on a tour of college campuses with Matisyahu, the internationally known Jewish American rapper. The tour promoted unity and empathy through music and encouraged dialogue about conflict in the Middle East.
“It was a really amazing opportunity to both grow as an artist … and as a human being who cares about these issues,” says Azzam, whose mother is a Jewish American professor focused on the Palestine-Israel conflict and whose father, an Egyptian Palestinian, has long worked as a peace activist devoted to the same area.
Still, Azzam was only 20 years old when he set out on the 12-stop tour (which included the University of Michigan). “It wasn’t like all of a sudden my whole life changed,” he says. “I think I still had a lot of growing to do as a person and as an artist.”
When the tour ended, Azzam says, he faced a jarring transition: Within the span of a week, he went from performing for 700-person crowds to playing for a handful of faces at the local bar. On tour, he’d earned enough money to build a studio and furnish it with equipment, but he wasn’t done paying his dues.
“When I got home, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m just me again, back in my life.’ I had this realization that if I’m going to rely on external situations and external validations for my happiness, I’m never going to be happy — because it’s always going to go up and down. I’m the same person I was on that tour bus and on the stages as I am at home. I need to learn how to manage that before I try to go do anything anywhere [else].”
He was still developing as an artist, Azzam says, still “exploring new sounds and new topics,” and when he got back home, he found himself wondering, “What do I really have to say? What do I want to talk about?”
Today, Azzam is supporting himself as a musician. In March, he released his latest project, an EP titled DNA Vol. 2, which he describes as an “amalgamation” of “all the things I’ve learned.”
Even more importantly, “I no longer feel like I have to prove myself in any area — so I can create freely,” Azzam says.
As for commercial success, “I really feel that it’s better to get it when you’re ready than to have something too soon,” Azzam says. “It’s really important to grow into the person who’s ready for the life you’re asking for. I do my best to focus on that.”
This story originally appeared in the April 2025 issue of Hour Detroit magazine. To read more, pick up a copy of Hour Detroit at a local retail outlet. Our digital edition will be available on April 7.
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