It is the very survival of the streets that makes children pick up guns in Somalia, not some older, wide-eyed rebel leader. My intimate experiences during these years are something which I have shared with people through my music but am very careful about how they are addressed.

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.

Somalis really are very musically sophisticated, and they're about their own thing.

You 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.

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

It was interesting to find how dominating American vision is all over the world. I think there's something to be said about the world's mindset and its economics and all of that, and I think it affects the way we see ourselves and it affects music.