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

I'm not about trying to get and get and get. I feel good when I get, but I kind of feel better when I give.

The pirates are serving a purpose right now. They come from regions which have been completely ignored, and Westerners have tried to destroy these regions by their constant plundering of resources and by the illegal dumping of nuclear waste. The pirates really began in order to discourage these actions - initially. And then the business became lucrative.

It was not my dream to be an artist. How could it have been? I thought, artist, much like a leader, was something you either were or weren't. Never something you set out to be.

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.

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.

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