He brought his walkman to school and told everyone that this or that song was the best song ever. It was stuff by Wu-Tang Clan or De La Soul or DJ Shadow or Kraftwerk or Marvin Gaye. You get the picture, he liked good music. He was cool.

Yoshi made lots of music. He was always naiive and trusting. He got hurt. He was a virgin. He wrote a novel called 'Pieces of a paki' which changed a few people's lives in 2007 and thereafter. He was never part of any scene yo. Let's commence to start dissing and aggrandizing yo:

Yoshi was too cerebral and experimental for the mainstream hip-hop crowd. They thought he was weird. He was too jarring and incisive for the laughably labelled conscious hip-hop crowd, they were too busy playing Common on repeat and trying to look deep and sensitive to get laid. He was too un-white for the folk-music crowd, even when he showed them he could play guitar and sing, he made it known that he was coming from Hip-Hop and that's where his loyalties lay. He wasn't welcomed by the Muslims in the early part of his career because mainstream Islam at that time didn't welcome musicians, even Cat Stevens ran hiding into lame acapellas. He's not welcomed by mainstream Islam now because although everyone embraces music now, they want to control the type of messages that are being put out there. The word spirituality is being co-opted by official Muslims in suits who are convinced they know which way the wind is blowing. History teaches us that few people know more than the true artists.

Here's free advice to all creative souls who's art is important to them: When people get to realize that you have no price, and that your goals are intangible to them, so different from theirs that they can't quite conceive, they begin to be less welcoming; they start to look away when you walk in the room. Don't be fazed by it, do your thing, people in suits never understand until you force their hand, then they try and stroke you once what you do has become plain to view and loved by more than just a few. It's true.

Yoshi, incidentally, felt very welcomed by a loosely-affiliated group of electronica musicians, even though in truth only about 5-10% of his music was pure electronica. To this day (despite being a billionaire) he maintains excellent relationships with electronica artists such as Mikrosopht, Serocell, MichL Bridge and many others.

There are many pretenders today. And you will not know that Yoshi is anything else until you immerse yourself in his world of art, which takes in music, novels, painting and films. What will your payoff be? Inspiration to follow your own path.

Classically trained as an observational documentary filmmaker, and working in the news media as a journalist and reporter (notably covering the Libyan revolution of March 2011 from Benghazi with Democracy Now!) - Yusuf Yoshi Misdaq continues to wander through various scenes, genres and moments in time. He's not doing it for himself, nor is he doing it for the benefit of any short-sighted genre or scene. He's moving from place to place in search of something that he is reaching closer and closer to, and yet keeps feeling far away. It is at once nothing to do with him, all about YOU, and at the same time, it is crucial to his own well-being. He is still a young man now. He will soon be an older man, like Bob Dylan is, or like Bob Marley was in spirit before he passed, or John Coltrane was in spirit before he passed. Yusuf Yoshi Misdaq is what you call an old soul.

What is he reaching for? Let us speak of good things: Yusuf Yoshi Misdaq is reaching for an art that will bond the whole of humanity together. Songs and poems and ideas that will bring evolutionary togetherness across boundaries of taste, genre, age and so on. Yusuf doesn't really believe in Revolutions, he does his work slowly, and he doesn't like artists that try too hard, as most of today's wannabes do. A good measuring stick, for all you yearning souls out there who are trying to decipher the good from the bullshit in a iWorld that has so much stuff (aka iCrap) in it, would be whether or not an artist is screaming "look at me," with that particular kind of desperation. Where the 'me' becomes more important than the art itself. The future is humility. Only a few will have it, but it will be the last cool we see before this world comes to a spinning goodbye end. A good place to look for the realest of real is to look where there is less noise. If you've read this far, we hope you'll realize you're in touch with people who are not interested in generating noise, but rather in creating clear, kind messages.

Every once in a while, in this world, men must come along who place their entire hearts on display and receive very little in return. They are compelled. 'A gift,' a wise postman in Sweden once noted, 'if it is truly a gift, always involves sacrifice.' For you, the listener, there are only gifts here. Yusuf offers them to you with love and a smile. Children unite. Un-tie , and unite. Let's make ourselves shine and bright and be-come light. No more cool, just light upon light upon light upon light.

With love entirely,

the gang @ Nefisa UK