Malcolm X, Prince, P-Funk, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Public Enemy, Langston Hughes, Fela Kuti, Wynton Marsalis, The Black Panther Party for Self Defense, A Tribe Called Quest, Curtis Mayfield, Me'Shell Ndegeocello, James Cleveland, Muhammad Ali, Terrence Trent D'Arby, Marcus Garvey, Bad Brains, Steve Coleman and Five Elements, Omar, Alice Walker, Stanley Clarke, Kwame Nkrumah, Van Halen, Herbie Hancock, Mohandas Gandhi, The Roots, Tin Machine, Marvin Gaye, John Henrik Clarke, D'Angelo, Bill Withers, Ntozake Shange, Sly Stone, Andre Crouch, James Brown, Rush, The Isley Brothers, Kahlil Gibran, Hall & Oates, Bootsy Collins, Gil Scott-Heron, Fishbone, Al Green, Charles R. Johnson, Cameo, Sting and The Police, John Coltrane, Che Guevara and Bob Marley
His solo debut Distorted Soul 2.0 was crowned "Best Funk Album of the Year" by Soul-Patrol.com and earned a Detroit Music Award for "Outstanding Urban Funk/Hip-Hop Recording", after international spins on Urban A/C, Rock, Urban Contemporary and even Smooth Jazz radio.
Slave: The Remixtape, which offers fourteen very different remixes of Nadir’s award-winning composition "Slave" (and six additional tracks online) - in Crunk, Funk, Hip-hop, Rock, Funky House, Techno styles and more - was a top 5 Breakout track on Billboard's Club Play chart.
Witnesses can catch Nadir skanking funk guitar on tour in the U.S., Canada or Europe, or rocking an acoustic in front of the White House demanding that George Bush step down. His funk-rock jam band, Distorted Soul, rips through Nadir’s diverse originals, then fires off hard rocking versions of soul classics like "Love TKO" or reincarnates rock anthems like "Life in the Fast Lane" as dance floor friendly funk burners.
"When you get right down to it," Nadir explains, "I'm all about telling stories, singing songs and making music that moves people - spiritually, emotionally, physically, politically, whatever. Don't just sit there! Do something!"
This Southern-bred singer-songwriter and his stalwart band play with an aplomb that could raise the corpses of Marley and Hendrix. No $h!t To label them simply neo-soul would be downright reductive." Metro Times, Detroit"
NADIR has received several recent awards for his work including:
- Five Detroit Music Awards: Three in a row (2005-2007) for Outstanding Urban/Funk Songwriter; Outstanding Urban/Funk Vocalist (2006); Outstanding Urban/Funk/Hip Hop Recording (2005)
- A finalist berth in the John Lennon International Songwriting Contest for "Slave"
- He was selected by the editors of Billboard Magazine as a finalist in the 2004 Independent Music World Series
- Listeners at GarageBand.com raved over his song "Slave" voting the track No. 1 Best Male Vocals in Funk, all-time, No. 1 Bitter Breakup Song in Funk, all-time, No. 2 Best Lyrics in Funk, all-time
Distorted Soul 2.0 is a ground-breaking album that has received rave reviews from critics and listeners alike. Chris Rizik of Soultracks.com says "The praise is well deserved, as this is absolutely infectious urban rock, calling to mind the better moments of artists from Ernie Isley to Lenny Kravitz." Dirk Binsau, publisher of the website Jazz-Not-Jazz.com, believes NADIR "has really developed a sound and style of his own and Distorted Soul 2.0 is very different from what Ive heard in a long time and thats what makes this album special."
""Its STONE COLD FUNK, it makes you DANCE, it ROCKS your world, its got GREAT LYRICS, it's got POWERHOUSE SOUL SINGING, it's got GREAT MUSCIANSHIP, it makes you THINK about the world and it makes you SMILE." - www.soul-patrol.com-
Slave: The Remixtape features 14 captivating new versions of NADIR's award-winning song by some of the best young producers on the scene. Guaranteed to make you a slave to the dancefloor!
"It’s a fantastic example of what remixers can do when given good material... If you’re into remixes, Nadir’s Slave: The Remixtape is a tour-de-force of remixing." -Synthtopia-
