Hip-hop in Africa has been very often a duplication of an American experience, but in a context that's totally alien to it.
K'naanYou have to let the world speak to you and then you speak, you know, so I'm in that moment now where I'm finding the world's voice.
K'naanThere's definitely anger, the demand of more from the world, a demand for justice. There's no other way I can perform the vocals than the way you hear them. It's not just the words, it's what is being felt.
K'naanThe people of Somalia just do not have a voice. They are to me the most forgotten people in the world.
K'naanI 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.
K'naan