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 wasn't making music consciously when I was younger. I was a musician, but that has its own stigmas. Anywhere on the planet, it's one of the more undervalued positions.

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.

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.

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 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.