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.

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.

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.

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

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

I think it's a mistake to work on success in career. I've worked on my passions obsessively. How can I say what I want to say more precisely than the last time I said it? Success is such an elusive concept. When you work for it, I think you get it in a way you might regret it.

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