The Orbit series
Every entry arrives
on a different medium.
Orbit is a connected album series where each release picks a new physical form and asks a new sense to do the work. The medium is not packaging. It is the argument.
I stopped optimizing for reach a while ago and started optimizing for resonance: a smaller group carrying something for years rather than a larger one hearing it once. Choosing the object people hold is part of how that happens.
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Level Up
A Steam game. The sense is play.
- The world's first playable rap album
- Headphones on, puzzle through it, hear the story
- Launched November 2024
-
Orbit
Vinyl and a book, with drink pairings. The sense is taste.
- Sit down, pour something, listen the whole way through
- The book carries the pairings and the notes
- Released 2025
Out now -
Orbit: Gravity
Cassette, as Parallel Frequency. The sense is movement.
- A slow-R&B mixtape for lovers, made with JB
- Meant to be given as a gift and played driving
- Self-funded
In progress
Game development
So I learned
to build games.
Level Up: The Playable Rap Album only worked if you could actually play it. I taught myself game development in 2024 to make that possible, and it shipped on Steam that November.
It has been written up in Debug Magazine and featured at the Game Devs of Color Expo. Level Up 2 is in development now.
Educational music
Six Sigma, set to music.
I dissect complex subjects and turn them into songs. Eight to ten of them sit inside MoreSteam's Six Sigma curriculum, where people studying for their belts learn the material from them.
By day, Aouad is a process optimization program manager with a passion for Lean Six Sigma and organizational efficiency. By night, he's an up-and-coming rapper and Nerdcore artist. MoreSteam
This is the part of my work that refuses to sit in one category, and the part I am most sure about. Music is a delivery mechanism for learning, and almost nobody uses it that way.
It is not only Six Sigma. Ohm-I and I made a song about the Raspberry Pi, and Raspberry
Pi themselves ran it on their official blog for Pi Day 2017, calling it a gem and telling
readers to check out more of his brilliant work
.
On stage and on record
A decade of rooms.
SXSW showcases from 2015 to 2020, and over a decade of video game, anime and pop culture conventions with panels along the way. I am a founding member of the Nerdy People of Color Collective.
I rap, and I play four instruments, which means I often finish a verse and pick up a horn on someone else's set the same night. I have played MAGFest with Mega Ran many times as both, backed Shing02 and Substantial at MomoCon, and played supporting saxophone for MC Frontalot and MC Lars.
At MAGFest in 2019 we performed Dr. Wily alongside Takashi Tateishi, who composed it for Mega Man. My last year performing with the NPC Collective I also project managed the set: travel, budget, the running order, and coordinating with the supporting band. The two halves of my working life are not actually separate.
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Ruler's Back, Classic Game Fest 2018Backing Mega Ran on sax, then in on the second verse. Both jobs, one song. -
NPC Collective, MAGFest 2023My last year performing it. I project managed the whole thing. -
Mega Ran, MAGFest 2019Dr. Wily with Takashi Tateishi, who composed it. I am on sax from the top.
Stages and records shared with Mega Ran, MC Frontalot, MC Lars, Shing02, Substantial, K-Murdock, Kadesh Flow, Shubzilla and Ohm-I, plus lounge shows that end up better than the billed ones. I have run convention panels with MC Frontalot, Sammus and Xavier Woods, who also narrated the opening of Nerdcore Emulation Station 2. My first convention ended with Jason David Frank asking me to perform my Power Rangers song for him, which remains the most improbable thing on this page. My longest-running creative partnership is with JB, and that is where Parallel Frequency comes from.
Booking
Tell me what you need.
Rates and estimates depend on the type of engagement. I will reply with the best estimate I can, based on the scope you describe.
Elsewhere
The rest of the work.
The process brain and the music are the same brain. Here is where the rest of it shows up.