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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.