Osama Com Laude

Early career

Experimenting early with stage names and abandoned rap group attempts it wasn’t till senior year of high school, alongside two childhood friends, Osama formed the group No Front. Amateur at first, the group eventually came together to release an underground album titled We’re Back, No Front in late 2006. The group wrote, recorded, mixed, mastered and eventually distributed the album on their own. When choosing their musical alter-egos, they played off their actual names.

Move to Pakistan

In spring 2009, Osama shared the stage with Pakistani superstar Ali Zafar where he opened and performed with Ali in a rendition of “Sajania.” The remix was featured on Alis official MySpace.

In the following years he maintained a solid presence in the rising Pakistani hip-hop scene with free mp3 online releases and notable performances alongside Imran Khan (singer) and Edward Maya. Osama was highlighted in Studio 051s Rockumentary also featuring Arieb Azhar, Haroon Rashid, Fringe Benefits, Waleed, and Abbas Ali Khan.

Frequent collaborations include No Front group members Da Beast and Myca C, producers HUZ, Shaheer Shahid & Talal Qureshi, Adil Omar and UK native singer-songwriter Bonnie Freechyld. In 2011, he was cited to have been approached by Fire Records’ artist Nouman Khalid to work on the singers sophomore studio album. The single "Desi Thumka" was the first single to come off the singers sophomore album. The international single, produced by Bilal Saeed, has garnered over 5.5 million plus views on YouTube and an immense amount of mainstream attention.

In the following weeks, he released his debut single "The Balance" produced by Talal Qureshi, accompanied by a music video directed by Shaheer Shahid and featuring a cameo by Adil Omar. The video had a short run on mainstream Asian TV channels like AAG, Play TV, MTV Pakistan and ARY Musik due to its questionable suicidal content and use of illuminati mockery. The director took a more personal approach in the video and the song's lyrical content highlighted the rappers everyday struggle of juggling dual lives. He began generating more remixes to famous tracks such as Tygas “Rack City”, the Bollywood item song “Munni Badnaam Hui” and Machine Gun Kelly and Waka Flocka Flames “Wild Boy”. The remix to “Wild Boy”, titled “Pakistani”, featuring Punjabi rapper Bali Shah, went viral on social media.

Present

The rapper announced focusing on releasing singles, starting with "I'm Zoning" (featuring Nescafé Basements Maria Fatima Unera Qureshi). The follow up single was "Sunshine" (feat. Da Beast). Delays on the video release for "Sunshine" were due to the 2012 ban of YouTube in Pakistan. The sophomore single was featured on BBC Asian Network

The rapper since then took a 4 year hiatus to focus & complete his MBBS degree from Rawalpindi Medical College and has, in recent times, resurfaced & now ready to launch a hat trick of singles in 2017 starting with "Baghdad". The single will be accompanied with a music video directed by HUZ, who is the songs producer as well.

Style and influences

Osama has been quoted to be heavily influenced by Eminem and Nelly and has stated listening to their respective LPs, The Marshall Mathers LP and Country Grammar, are the initial reason the rapper started writing lyrics and making songs.

2012 Lux Style Awards

In the 2012 Lux Style Awards a choreographed dance performed featured two paid dancers imitating the roles of Nouman Khalid and Osama Com Laude. The artists have since then denied any reports of being associated with the act and never being approached by Lux in the first place.

Singles and features