Tamer Hosni

Tamer Hosny (Arabic: تامر حسني; born Tamer Hosni Abbas in Cairo, on August 16, 1977) is an Egyptian singer, actor and composer. He was initially featured on Free Mix mixtapes from Free Music, an Egyptian music production company. His breakthrough single "Habibi Wenta B'eed" garnered him success.*

While Tamer Hosny's musical style thus far has been innocuous if not nauseating heartthrob pop for most of his career, his life story is quite intersting. He grew up with a passion for soccer and said to have played it professionally for 9 years. He was introduced by Salma El Shamaa to opera. Afterwards, he was recognized by Nasr Mahrous, the manager and owner of Free Music production company. He later on signed a contract with Free Music in 2002. Tamer didn't debut, as most people believe, with Sherine's first mixtape. Instead, he was featured in previous mixtapes, and one of them featured other artists like Khaled Agag and Mohamed Mounir. However, the duet CD with Sherine was the launching point for his career in pop music and film.

He starred in the 2003 Egyptian movie, Halet Hobb (A State of Love). The movie featured music by Hosny himself. In 2004, he released his first studio album as a Solo artist. Titled Hobb, the album features the single "Arrab Habibi". The album was quite a success to Hosny as a solo artist. His hit, "Arrab Habibi", was heavily rotated on satellite music channels and became very popular.

When Hosny became more financially capable, he decided to look for his father. His father was away for 19 years, until Hosny found him in London. He went after him and encouraged him to go back to Egypt, which he did.

Sayyed El Atfy was released in 2005, and the movie featured 2 extremely successful songs. "Koll Marra" and "Nour Einy", both were performed within the movie. The full versions of the songs accompanied the performance in addition to scenes from the movie were made into music videos. They were initially exclusive to Melody Hits channel.

In 2005, Hosny was embroiled in a trial case in which he was charged with forging a passport and avoiding conscription. It was a heavily publicized case in the media, since he and fellow Egyptian artist Haytham Shaker. It has been reported that they both went to professional forgers to create a document that they completed military service in Egypt. This came in the middle of Hosny's preparations for a new Album and movie(Omar and Salma). It was also reported that the news leaked after the forger himself confessed to a close friend of his.

They were both sentenced to 3 years in jail, and were fined 50,000 L.E each. Rumors have circulated that Hosny's sentence was shortened. During his imprisonment, Nasr Mahrous released the album Einaya Bethebbak, as well as a music video from one of the album's singles.

At the end of March 2007, Hosny released his latest album "Ya Bent El-Eh." The album features 13 songs, 9 of them were stolen and leaked on the internet before it was released, which caused sales to suffer. Tamer Hosny's official site says about this album: "It's a nice album that considered to be his first real step in his musical life".

*Much of this article is copied from Wikipedia.org