BELLY

Ahmad Balshe (Arabic: أحمد بلشي‎‎) (born April 7, 1984), better known by his stage name Belly, is a Palestinian-Canadian hip hop recording artist, singer-songwriter and record producer.

Born in Jenin, Palestine, and raised in Ottawa, his musical career began in city clubs. Belly has since won a Juno, three MuchMusic Video Awards and has twice attained a top chart position in the national Much Music Countdown. Belly has written songs for many artists. His stage name was derived from the term "rebellious".

The discography of Belly includes penned records for a wide variety of A-list musical acts (notably, fellow Canadian, The Weeknd). Most recently, Belly co-wrote Beyoncé's "6 Inch", featuring The Weeknd. The song is taken from her critically lauded visual album Lemonade, which was recently nominated for four Emmy Awards. Belly himself was just honoured with the "Songwriter of The Year" award at the 2016 SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) Awards for his significant and outstanding contributions to popular music over the past year. The Canadian native is also set to a new mixtape and full-length album later this year by Roc Nation.

His first single "Pressure", featuring Ginuwine peaked at number 10 on the Canadian CHR radio charts, and number one on MuchMusic's Video chart. In April 2007, Belly released the video for his second single "Don't Be Shy", featuring Nina Sky, as well as the video for "History of Violence" directed by Martin Verigin and Jeffrey Hagerman. The video remains his most controversial record to date. In "History of Violence", Belly explains his views on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the War in Iraq.