Somalian born
lyricist K’naan is far left of the normal gangster, hipster, or baller acts
that rip the air waves today. His anti-norm noise
contains worldly sounds of reggae, rock, and Hip-Hop which
lay background to lyrics of struggle, spiritually and empowerment.
Without being anymore obvious, K’naan simply cannot be compared to the musical
efforts of the mass amounts of self contained artists sprawled across the
musical universe.
K’naan gained his first breath of wax on the
afro-beat compilation Building Bridges
and since has propelled into a solo calling as the voice of the struggle seen
in distant places that most Americans fears to think about. His debut, The Dusty Foot Philosopher, was an
extreme success, winning awards and accolades validating himself as an artist
and a musician, and more importantly, as a voice of the unheard.
Now four years since
his dusty debut, K’naan has decided to release the
beast in the form of his sophomore effort Troubadour.
The LP has already acclaimed success in frontiers spanning above and beyond
Hip-Hop and is another example of the thoughts, stories, and rhymes that dwell
within the soft spoken wordsmith.
AllHipHop.com: So many artists claim that they are “different” from
the norm, some rightfully so, but the sound of Troubadour cannot be denied as being unique and diverse Do you
agree that it’s a sound of its own?
K’naan: Yeah, I feel like it’s a sound of its
own. And so I want it to be recognized as such. That it’s a standard on its sound;
it’s not trying to mimic something. It’s creating something, so that’s kind of
how I see it. With no ego attached, I feel like that’s what it is. It just
happens though, that’s the thing. I only realize after listening to the whole
thing, that it’s doing those things. But it’s just my instinct that works like
that. I’ll be in the studio with another artist and we may be collaborating or
just thinking about a song and then we’ll play some chords and the way that I
might do, the way I might accent a thing or do the time signature of the drum
pattern or think of certain melody or the chord progression, all the artists I
meet always say, “That’s different, I would never think of it that way.”
AllHipHop.com: How
do you think you acquired that musical talent?
K’naan: I think from growing up in a whole
other culture and also really being musically wide open, listening to different
kinds of music and traveling. And having a real sensibility, a lyrical
sensibility, street sensibility, but then being able to transfer that to the
world.
AllHipHop.com: You
really do bring your experiences of the world to your music, most artists in
Hip-Hop do not take these experiences and bring them to their music, and they
stay one dimensional.
K’naan: Yeah! And that’s weird to me because
if you have the opportunity to do that, see the world, how could you not bring
something back for the people that you come from. It’s kind of selfish.
AllHipHop.com: Nothing
against artists who do not do so, but it’s almost like cheating their fans out
of a new knowledge and experience through the words.
K’naan: Yeah, you are right. They do travel
the world, these artists have been everywhere, some
have even heard orchestras from the Czech Republic. How could that not be
interesting at some point? I just think we all have equal opportunity in that
we hear it while we travel as musicians and artists. But giving credit where
credit is due, some of these artists focus is expressing the moment in time and
where they’re at. So that’s where they’re at and they feel they need to talk
about that. So that’s cool, but for me I’m interested just as well on where
we’re going.
AllHipHop.com: The
title, Troubadour, means a traveling
poet. Why do you feel that these world issues that you talk about are so
important for people to hear especially when we’re in an America where
everything is focused on our
problems, our economic troubles, our woes.
K’naan: It’s kind of strange in that people
still don’t realize that those are not separate things. That
the [world’s] issues are your economic crisis; it’s really the same thing and
its one thing. And when you travel you get to really see that it’s one
thing, that the cause and effect is not state wide, cause and effect is global.
Honestly man, from knowing my music, you know that I don’t preach nothing. It’s
just there; if we don’t talk about it it’s actually true to say that we’re
making an effort to ignore it. It’s not making an effort to say it, because
it’s there. It’s making an effort to ignore it.
AllHipHop.com: You’ve always stated that that music has not
changed since your debut, but as an artist how have you evolved since you first
penned The Dusty Foot Philosopher?
K’naan: I grew as an artist, I grew musically.
A lot of the musical growth is something I put together on this album. But I
think that the most interesting place for me as far as growing as a lyricist
and an artist is that during The Dusty Foot Philosopher I cared to show
you and for you to know. In some subconscious way a lot of people can’t hear it
in the music, I think I partly cared back then that you know I’m good. Like, I
had lines on that album that are like, “Oh s**t, that’s dope.” And I know it is
too, but I didn’t really need to say that because I know it’s good. If you know
it’s good do you always have to show that it’s good too? So like for this album
I didn’t do that, for this album I felt so grown about things that I stayed
away from ill lines and similes that I could’ve put in there because I’m
telling a story. This is good that’s it, I don’t need
to show you that it is.
I think it is grace because that’s the kind of artist I love. Bob
Marley wasn’t trying to show you nothing. Even literature, when I read books,
for example there’s a girl named Zadie Smith and she has a book named White
Teeth and she’s brilliant. I remember reading this book and thinking, “Wow,
she’s a genius. Her similes are incredible, it’s amazing.” At some point I was
like, “Ah, I get what you’re doing. You’re showing me: one too many similes,
one too many good lines, one too many flexing of this thing.” It’s like well,
you don’t need to show me anything as an artist you just need to reveal a
world, not show me how good you are at revealing the world.
AllHipHop.com: Do you feel that your songs have appropriately
revealed your world in Somalia and your struggles of your past?
K’naan: I
try, and I know songs that I have constructed out of real personal scenarios,
which otherwise I couldn’t have a conversation about. It would not have been
physically possible for me to sit down with my friends and recount those things
without completely falling into serious depression. I made rhymes out of them
and kids sing along and I’m watching them sing it and at some point it’s just
a song.
AllHipHop.com: How do you handle putting out your story especially
when like you said, it becomes just a song?
K’naan: Well,
that’s an interesting question. The truth is that my story is a country
disguised as a person. So in that sense it’s all personal
but at the same time it’s all universal because my story speaks to millions of
people. I feel comfortable because it’s bringing to life something necessary
for an entire people. I’m just kind of like the prototype story, like the norm
for them, the strange for everybody else. And that’s why that’s okay for me.
AllHipHop.com: Critics of your music always try to compare your
sound because they simply cannot display your music alone. Instead of being
infused between this artist and that artist, what do you feel you should be
seen as?
K’naan: Wow,
good question. An artist; possibly someone who is in their
personal life rebellious, and maybe that leads over to the music. Someone who is truly interested in contributing something genuine
to the world of music. That’s it. I don’t think of myself as any other man.
All the other things they bring up to make sense of my music and who I am and
all of that are complements, everything from Eminem to Bob Marley (laughs), it
spans massively. But I’m really just K’naan, and I’m trying to get songs off of
my chest.
