Restless, confrontational and impossible to categorise, Youniss Ahamad moves through sound like a quantum particle — shifting shape with every release. The Antwerp-based multi-disciplinary artist fuses post-punk abrasion, hip-hop urgency, noise textures and experimental storytelling into a volatile, high-impact live experience.
Influenced by his ancestral roots in Côte d’Ivoire and Iraq, and by growing up in the Antwerp suburbs as a Black artist with an Arabic name, his work navigates identity, displacement and resistance. The 2023 album White Space marked a turning point: distorted guitars, breakbeats and barbed lyricism replaced earlier club-oriented production, confronting anti-Blackness and Belgium’s colonial residue head-on. The 2024 EP Do We Try Beyond The Edge? sharpened that political and sonic intensity even further.
On the forthcoming Good Effort!, he steps out from behind the distortion, embracing jazz-leaning arrangements and a fuller vocal range. Channeling the exploratory spirit of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly, Flying Lotus and Slauson Malone, the record reflects on urban life while pushing back against gentrification.
On stage, expect something visceral and unpredictable — a performance that doesn’t just demand attention, but reshapes the space around it.
Playing on: Friday, 24 April, 2026 | RÁDIO_FM Stage | 21:0 – 21:40
https://www.youniss.co/
https://youniss.bandcamp.com/music
https://music.apple.com/be/artist/youniss/1532901699