Rap music gets a bad rap. Our parents tell us it’s loud noise with too much swearing. Radio stations and dance clubs play only mainstream rap, materialistic music about bitches and gats. Drugs and “bling.” Somewhere, somehow, the true art of rhyme was forgotten and then replaced with superficial words and overused, repetitive beats.
There is good news for all the Cabrillo hip hop and rap fans who share these concerns. Just when it seemed that rap music was beyond redemption, K’naan came onto the scene. He reinstates the purpose and origin of hip hop music by using his music as a weapon. He draws inspiration from his war torn childhood in Somalia. His music is spine chilling and uplifting while it teaches and entertains. He is truly acting as a voice of the global struggle. K’naan is both a poet and a rapper. His words can be fully appreciated when spoken or in writing.
“So what’s hardcore?” K’naan asks on his debut album The Dusty Foot Philosopher.
“Really, are you hardcore? Hmm.-
We begin our day by the way of the gun,
Rocket propelled grenades blow you away if you front,
We got no police ambulance or fire fighters,
We start riots by burning car tires,
They looting, and everybody start shooting,
Bullshit politicians talking about solutions,
But it’s all talk, you can’t go half a block without a roadblock,
You don’t pay at the road block you get your throat shot…”
He was born Kaynaan Warsame in 1978. The name translates to “traveler” in Somali. K’naan is a Somali refugee living in Ontario, Canada.
K’naan spent part of his childhood in Mogadishu, the capital of the African country of Somalia. He lived in the district of Wardiihigleey, more commonly known as “The River of Blood” due to ongoing political conflict and violence that continues to this day. Violence recently broke out in Mogadishu on Sept. 22, when mortars fired into a marketplace killed at least 32 people. The current clash is between Islamic extremist anti-government groups and the Somali government assisted by Ethiopian forces.
K’naan’s father left Somalia first and moved to New York to make money for his family. With the money he sent, he would include rap albums for K’naan. Through this musical medium, K’naan taught himself to speak English by studying the hip hop and rap diction of American artists such as Nas and Rakim. He would then copy the phonetics of their lyrics and style, even though he could not comprehend the actual meaning of the songs.
He left Somalia in 1991 when the Somali government collapsed. As civil war broke out, K’naan was fortunate to have his visa approved and consequently took the last commercial flight out of the country before the US embassy closed. He reunited with his father and other relatives in Harlem, New York City and they eventually moved to Rexdale, Ontario where there is a large Somali Canadian community.
K’naan dropped out of high school in the tenth grade and traveled throughout Canada, rapping at open mic events. In 1999 he befriended a Canadian music promoter who got him a gig at the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees where he performed a spoken word piece in criticism of the United Nations and their failed aid missions to his home country.
Fortunately for the young artist, Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour sat in the audience and was extremely taken with K’naan’s courageous performance. Soon after, N’Dour invited K’naan to contribute to his 2001 album Building Bridges. Because of his addition to N’Dour’s project, K’naan was taken on his worldwide tour.
In the next few months, K’naan worked on more United Nations events and performed at the Montreal Jazz Festival. Soon he met a Canadian producer who helped him create his debut album, The Dusty Foot Philosopher in 2005. In 2006 K’naan’s album won the Juno Award for Rap Recording of the Year and was nominated for the Polaris Music Prize. In 2007 the album won the newcomer category in the BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music.
This year K’naan’s album was re-released and re-packaged as a “Deluxe Edition” featuring new remixes and a DVD. He has been promoting his album on tour and working on a follow-up album. K’naan has been collaborating with artists such as Nelly Furtado, Mos Def, The Roots, Dead Prez, Damian Marley and Pharaohe Monch. He toured on Live 8, Breedlove Odyssey and the Welcome to Jamrock tour.
Most recently he played at the Outside Lands Music Festival in San Francisco, Earthdance Festival in Laytonville, and 330 Ritch in San Francisco. For more information or to hear his music visit www.thedustyfoot.com or www.myspace.com/knaanmusic
“K’naan will make a song anywhere, on anything, out of anything.” –Mos Def
“If I rhyme about home and got descriptive,
I’d make Fifty Cent look like Limp Bizkit,
It’s true, and don’t make me rhyme about you,
I’m from, where the kids is addicted to glue,
Get ready, he got a good grip on the machete,
Make rappers say they do it for love like R. Kelly,
It’s HARD, harder than Harlem and Compton intertwined,
Harder than harboring Bin Laden and rewind….”
-From “What’s Hardcore?”
“It is better to light a candle than to curse the dark
In the eyes of the youth there are question marks
Like freedom, freedom for the mind and soul
We don’t see ‘em,
See them for their worth at all.
That’s why we lead ‘em
Lead ‘em to these wars and what is it we feed ‘em
Feed ‘em our impurities and who it is we treat ‘em
Treat ‘em like the enemy humanity will need ‘em
Need ‘em like the blood we spill and where freedom
Freedom for the hearts we fill
Mislead ‘em
They hunger for the love we give but we cheat ‘em
The guys beat ‘em and all he want is his freedom
So they defeat ‘em
Whatever spirit he’s got
Beat ‘em
And they teach ’em the rest of the world don’t need him
And he believes it’s a disease that he’s heathen
Put up your fists if all you want is freedom
Put up your fists if all you want is-”
-From “In The Beginning”
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