The people of Somalia just do not have a voice. They are to me the most forgotten people in the world.

I faced quite a few challenging times, and in front of those, I was more positive than some people not facing those conditions. I'm actually of the belief now that it is that struggle that offers you that open-hearted hope.

I'm writing from a place of - a center of authenticity, somewhere that only I know how to write from.

To reach your goal authentically is probably, in the end, going to mean much more to you than having reached it in a false way.

It's not longer 'Look what I can do, I can do it better then you.' It's just I am.

I learned to fire guns at the age of nine or so, but luckily was not out killing people. We zigzagged the streets to escape those trying to kill us. I guess it would have been a matter of time till I turned around with a gun myself, to go after those coming for us. But I was fortunate. The grenade incident was about an explosion which destroyed a section of my school, from a grenade that me and my cousin detonated by accident. We both lived to tell about it.

Hip-hop in Africa has been very often a duplication of an American experience, but in a context that's totally alien to it.