The Mudedes are Manicas and were once close to Bishop Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa, the prime minister of the short-lived coalition government called Zimbabwe Rhodesia (1979–1980).

Mudede was also a member of the now defunct Seattle Research Institute, a Marxist circle inspired by the Frankfurt School and the work of Hardt and Negri.

Mudede has also published essays and articles with Nic Veroli, a French-American Marxist philosopher, and is on the editorial board for Arcade, an architectural journal.

Mudede's work has appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, LA Weekly, and CTheory, which published one of his most popular pieces of writing, "The Turntable," a theory of the hip hop practice of scratching and sampling.

In 2019, he directed and co-wrote the feature film Thin Skin, about a jazz trumpeter in Seattle whose estranged Nigerian father re-enters his life.