Isam Bachiri is 29 years old and is originally born in Morocco. He was born in 1977 in the Danish Capital Copenhagen on the 1st of August. He’s raised in Denmark and he has been living in Brøndby Strand whole his life. Isam went to the Islands-Brygge School in Copenhagen, where he graduated as mathematical student and later on he began studying cand.negot at the University of Odense. He went for Kuwait for 6 month and discovered a lot about himself and his culture. Afterwards he went home and brought a lot of musical inspiration and ideas which he presented and introduced Waqas and Lenny for. The cand.negot study takes 5 years so he hasn’t finished it yet, because of the music and the following busyness. Already as a kid, people and teachers from his school encouraged him to sing and use his voice, because they thought it was so unique. Isam actually had an offer from a fine musician-school, but declined it because he was more interested in playing football and hanging out with his friends at that time.
Isam came in contact with the music, by showing a huge interest for the developing hip-hop scene and subculture in America. At that time the hiphop-scene, underground, graffiti and subculture living and styles popularity exploded in Denmark and the rest of the world. Isam quickly found himself imitating the new and cool culture by amateur-rapping, tagging and break dancing. He started break dancing together with Lenny and Waqas. But after a very short while he realized that his body wasn’t build for break dance moves or tricks, so he started concentrating on the rap and its lyrics instead. Isam is maybe not World Champion in break dance, but instead he has created and developed a phenomenal singer-voice, as you can here on tracks like Aicha, I Only Ask of God, Any Given Time and Walou.
His voice has a unique sound and comes out in the radio and loudspeakers without its equal on earth. In the early years of Outlandish Isam had a hard time controlling and utilize his voice varieties 100%, because he was quite young, singing was new to him and he was very shy to. But he took a lot of singing and vocals lessons, when he knew music was what he wanted and therefore the focus on singing, vocals and rhythm has been increased on the album releases. Hearing Closer than Veins one will discover Isam does almost all the singing, fillings and backing vocals himself, which is very difficult and rare in music.He is also a very good and very fast rapper and often combines he’s speed of rapping together with the singing. Just hear the first verse in Eyes Never Dry, Kom Igen and his verse in Walou.
As person Isam is a more recumbent kind of guy, a bit shy some would say but also very delightful. He is actually the youngest in the group, but functions and acts more like a father figure. He’s the creative mind in the Group, he always knows what to do and what to mix and what the next step should be. Isam is very political interested and cares and deals a lot about the situation in the Middle East, the suffering of kids and people in Africa and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Therefore it’s only natural for him to step forward at event shows, and declare to George Bush and the ministers in Denmark, that Outlandish doesn’t like war. A lot of people find it very provocative and he has been quite a discussed figure in Denmark. Very surprised and pleased was he, when he won the award for best singer/vocalis in Denmark 2003.