'We just want to kind of get our mark on the world': Six Milwaukee siblings form hip hop group Voices of Prophecy

 

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) — If you’re driving down W. North Ave. in Milwaukee, where the road intersects with the highway onramp, you may want to lower both your windows and your tunes.

And if you do, you’ll probably be able to hear them before you see them.

Meet Yahweh, Hanna, Yohan, Yarad, Yosef, and David Amun, who are better known as the Voices of Prophecy — a musical group comprised of six siblings, ranging from their teens to their forties.

While originally from Chicago, the group has spent years traveling across the country, taking over the streets in cities like Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Miami, and Portland.

But as of just a few months ago, they landed in Milwaukee, a place they remember visiting while growing up.

“At first, me and my siblings made music for fun,” Yahweh Amun told CBS 58’s Ellie Nakamoto-White. “It was a joke at first, and then it kind of started getting serious when we started making money.”

The band officially formed in November 2021, when the group was visiting Santa Monica, California.

And while they practice music inclusivity by playing songs in multiple genres like pop, rock, and hiphop, what’s especially unique about Voices of Prophecy is that the majority of their performances are free-styled.

“The best way to describe [our sound] is it’s very raw and very real. We do everything very authentically, like just however we feel, however it comes out,” said Hanna Amun. “If it comes out bad, we leave it. We keep it. We like the rough stuff of the music.”

The group free-styles on all kinds of topics, but their lyrics always come from the heart.

“I really love that part of music, opening up and seeing other areas of your personality you’ve never seen before,” said Yosef Amun. “It’s very deep. It’s a lot more deep than I even expected when I started.”

They touch on topics like love, friendship, family, and struggles they face on a daily basis, often times getting retrospective and interpersonal.

“It’s with my family, so when we make music, it helps us stick together,” said Yahweh Amun. “Other people, they want to judge you because they think that your actions are strange but my family, you know, I’ve known these guys for my whole life so it’s never strange to be myself.”

His sibling, Yohan, agreed, adding that music allows himself to “become more open.”

“You become more honest and you have to be more willing to show yourself in front of other people,” said Yohan Amun. “It’s a kind of growth that transforms you as a person.”

If they’re not practicing or recording their latest in the studio, the group spends hours performing out on the street and selling CDs to passersby.

“In the world we live in, there was no one who really had our backs and no one to look out for us, so even in the most difficult situations we’ve managed to get through it because we want to be together above everything,” said David Amun. “What we want to do is we want to have something different. We don’t want to do the same thing that’s been done before. No one gets remembered for repeating someone else.”

And when it comes to working with family?

“Functional, dysfunctional,” Yarad Amun said with a slight smile. “It’s my siblings, so we definitely fight.”

But, he continued, at the end of the day, it’s all about the output.

“I can vent my emotions through just the art of free-styling and making music,” Yarad Amun said. “It’s a way I get to express myself and character... it’s learning how to be a free version of myself and as that image when I perform.”

Because they’re a traveling group, Voices of Prophecy said they aren’t sure how long they’ll be in the Brew City, but appreciate the support from the Midwest.

“It’s the love that they show, that’s what makes this place so memorable,” Yosef Amun said.

If you want to listen, you can find the group on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and on various social media platforms.

“Everyone listens to music,” Hanna Amun said. “So we just want to kind of get our mark on the world to let them know that there’s more than what meets the eye."