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 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.

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.

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

In the time of war, everyone was basically trying to live and manage the best they could. But you also had another period which was not a hard time at all - it was just a beautiful time. I lived in both eras. I got to fully experience and appreciate both the tragedy of Somalia and the beauty of 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.