NYC-based LGBTQ+ musician Saint Ahmad moved to North Carolina from Japan when he was 11 years old. Although his home in Japan had been on a U.S. military base, his sudden transition to the southern states left Ahmad culture-shocked and reeling. “There are no social classes,” Ahmad says, remembering his time on base. “No one really has a bigger house or a better car. We’re all living in military housing. We all go to the same grocery store. Our parents all work on the same base.”
As a queer Black child navigating life in North Carolina, Ahmad experienced the intersection of American racism and homophobia first-hand. He attended an all-white private school and was the first in his school to come out publicly—For Ahmad, that period of time, of intense bullying and emotional isolation was traumatizing.
Although Ahmad now lives in Brooklyn and has been creating music since 2020, that childhood trauma is still a formative force, and it fuels his distinctive hip-hop, rap, pop, and club music. No matter what the song’s subject (ketamine, staying up until 5 a.m., being at raves) “it’s all centered around me releasing these ideas and perceptions that I have of myself and adopting new ones,” he says.
But Ahmad’s particular brand of grungy club music can only be understood through the lens of his personal journey through some of NYC’s most notable clubs. The rapper, singer, dancer, and songwriter reveals that he hit the clubs when he was underage, accompanying his older boyfriend on nights out. For him, the magnetic energy, swirling lights, and pulsing beat were an addictive escape from his strained familial relationships and time in North Carolina.
His most recent music video, “Minds,” dropped on September 29, and is a little unsettling. The exaggerated makeup, gritty camera quality, up-and-personal filming, and imaginative editing create a product that could belong in the backroom version of a pulsing NYC nightclub. Add to that Ahmad’s electronic-infused singing of “Get out of your mind,” and the result is a truly trippy experience.
Of course, the effect is purposeful—Saint Ahmad and the director of the “Minds” music video, Londoner Joe Cohen, wanted the project to feel like a DIY club video from the 90s. “I was going out in the late 90s, and I was filming at that time with these mini TV cameras,” Cohen says. “You bring what you know, and you bring what you can to your own creative process. So we shot on this hi 8-camera for some of it, and we shot on a 5D camera.”
The video’s aesthetic is also a nod to queer club legacies like Leigh Bowery, whose 1980s London club, Taboo, defied expected sexual practices. RuPaul is another formative inspiration, and “I think RuPaul is … probably one of the only two significant New York club kids that are POC that we’ve seen in mainstream,” Ahmad says. “We’ve seen RuPaul take her love for the club and going out and dressing up and getting people’s attention and just going to the bodega, walking around the street and stuff like that … and turn it into the empire that she has now, which is RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Ahmad’s exaggerated makeup and curved lipstick pay tribute to other queer artists like Tricky and Ian Isiah.
“I don’t know how I came up with ‘get out of your mind,'” Ahmad muses. “I don’t remember what was going on at the time. But I lived in a one-bedroom in Bushwick, so I’m sure I probably felt like the walls were caving in at times.”
“A lot of my party life is just going out with my friends and getting lit and going to the afters, staying until like ten in the morning and just having a good time,” he adds. “Relaxing, chilling, and literally getting out of our minds.”
