Mekdes – The Boy I Am

Sometimes, music is playing while I am actually doing something else. Then a voice comes along that makes me stop.

Mekdes has that kind of voice.

It is often quiet and restrained. Yet I always feel that something important is being told. He does not have to raise his voice to get my attention. I simply listen.

That is what happened to me with The Boy I Am, Mekdes’s album released on 9 January 2026. When I first recommended this record here, what I especially liked was its warmth and that incredible lightness. It has now been with me for months. And the more I have learned about Mekdes, the more I understand what lies beneath it.

The Boy I Am is both the album title and the name of its title track. Behind it is a personal story that was still far from complete when he was writing.

Why the album is called “The Boy I Am”

Mekdes was assigned female at birth and was initially known as a female singer. In November 2025, he spoke publicly about feeling that he is a man. Today, he uses male pronouns.

What I find particularly moving is the role music played in that.

According to his own explanation, the title track was the first time Mekdes wrote down and voiced his feelings about his own gender identity. The song expressed something for which the right words had apparently been missing before.

With The Boy I Am, he eventually gave the whole album a name that makes this personal search visible.

When he chose the album title, he still hoped he would have found a clearer way of dealing with this by the time it was released. But that clarity did not simply arrive with a finished song or a finished album. Conversations, encounters and speaking about it publicly were meant to help him understand himself better.

The album title names that search. In the title track, you hear a decisive moment along the way.

Mekdes does not describe that earlier phase of his life as purely negative, either. In an interview, he explicitly emphasised that he was also proud to have lived as a woman.

I think that is an important thought. Understanding yourself differently does not have to mean rejecting the life you have lived so far.

Perhaps that is also why his way of singing moves me so much: I feel I am listening to someone who reveals something of himself as he tells his story.

His own path began earlier

Mekdes was born in Ethiopia in 1998 and adopted by a Danish family at the age of eight months. He grew up in Starup in South Jutland; the family later moved to Kolding.

Because there was no music school in his small hometown, he taught himself to sing and play instruments.

At 17, Mekdes posted a cover version on Instagram in the hope of being discovered. A major record label did indeed get in touch just two weeks later.

And Mekdes said no.

Their ideas about where the music should go did not fit together. I find that remarkable. Hoping for attention and then turning it down because it would take you in the wrong direction takes a very good sense of what you want, especially when you are young.

Later, too, it remained important to him to do as much of the writing, playing and production himself as possible. In 2021, he won the P3 Guld talent award; his debut album Greedy followed in January 2022. His work as a producer earned him a nomination at the Danish Music Awards.

The Boy I Am was eventually released independently, with Mekdes retaining artistic control. As he describes it, it contains three years of personal development and of confronting expectations that had restricted his sense of himself.

Light without being superficial

Ten songs, just under 32 minutes. Not an especially long record, really, but one that leaves a lot with me.

What I like about it is how many of the songs seem to float along. You let the album play, enjoy its atmosphere and only gradually realise how much seriousness there is within it.

In places, I hear soul, R&B, a little reggae and even African tonal colours. None of it pushes itself forward. Electronic and acoustic elements feel organic and entirely natural.

The voice fits into these arrangements just as naturally. It has room without making the music around it meaningless. It is precisely that interplay that holds my attention as I listen.

“Waiting For You” fits that well. Mekdes describes the song as an exploration of situations in which you do not feel safe or that you belong. It is about finding support within yourself and among people you trust, rather than constantly trying to meet other people’s expectations.

With “Voicemail To Heaven”, the record ends with grief for someone important.

These are not light subjects. Yet I do not find the album oppressive. The music allows closeness and has rhythm and warmth. You can enjoy it before you know every story behind it.

A record that has found its place

For me, The Boy I Am is a summer album in the best sense.

A record for a warm afternoon or evening when you are in no hurry. The music creates a space, a mood.

Then something interesting happens: at first, you simply listen. At some point, you pay closer attention. A song stays with you. A line. A melody. A feeling.

The longer the record plays, the more you give yourself over to its mood.

By the way, I mostly listen to music digitally. I also like to buy particularly good albums, or ones that matter to me, on vinyl. The Boy I Am would definitely be one of those records, although I have not found a vinyl edition so far.

So I listen to it digitally.

What stays with me

An enthusiasm that stays

Perhaps that is the clearest sign of a special album for me: the enthusiasm stays. The music finds its place in everyday life. You do not have to persuade yourself to play it again; you simply want to.

Mekdes — The Boy I Am. My discovery of the year. And my album of the year so far.

Sources for the article

DR profile (reproduction)

GAFFA: musical approach

Artist profile and album background

GAFFA: the story of the title track

GAFFA: interview about his identity

Soundvenue: the album and its closing track

Album details on Spotify