K’Naan fled the destruction of Mogadishu to become his nation’s unofficial artistic champion
30 June 2006
Meaning “come out” in Somali, “Soobax” is a direct call to the warlords who have ruled the 28-year-old’s homeland since the civil wars in the early 1990s. This lead single from K’Naan’s debut album The Dusty Foot Philosopher is one of the reasons why the Canada-based rapper is gaining notoriety around the world.
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Rapper K’naan Photo Steve Carty |
Tonight, he’s wearing a button-down gown, and a stylish hat cocked to the side of his curly afro. His band consists of a DJ and a couple of congos and djembes. He doesn’t look or sound your average MC, and he insists he doesn’t want to be regarded that way. “I think it’s more important to be your entire self in your music,” he says, explaining that many rappers in Africa are quick to adopt the US culture, clothes and all. “When I play in Africa, they look at me like ‘wow!’. And they’re in Africa! A lot of people take the format of whatever they know is popular, and they use it and try to superimpose their lives onto that without really developing who they are. And a lot of artists aren’t really doing anything different from American artists.”
K’Naan’s own story is more remarkable than most, involving a harrowing odyssey that would see him exiled from his war-torn country before living in New York’s Harlem district and eventually settling Toronto. Having grown up in an artistic family within the dangerous Somalian capital of Mogadishu, K’Naan Warsame (his first name means “traveller”) could liken his ghetto credentials to those of 50 Cent. He fired his first gun at eight and witnessed his three best friends shot when he was 11. His older brother was incarcerated after blowing up a federal building. He managed to escape a firing squad thanks to his aunt, a famous singer in East Africa.
“The funny thing about the mind is that it preserves the things it loves the most, and pushes to the back the things that it detests, like some of those big memories in my life,” he contemplates with a soft accent that’s a hybrid of his Canadian and Somalian upbringing. “I’ve seen my closest friends die, I’ve run from situations.”
The rapper’s mother was adamant that her family should flee the country, and K’Naan speaks of her with clear pride. “My mom was very insistent on survival,” he says. “We were from a poor neighbourhood, probably the poorest and most violent in the country. She had no rights as far as the world is concerned to think that she could get us to New York City. How does someone come up with that ambition? But she did.” Making daily trips to the towns U.S embassy, her visa requests were rejected for up to a year. Finally, in January 1991, a civil servant relented as the embassy was preparing to close down. “Our family made it on the last flight to get out of the country,” he continues. “It’s been 15 years since and there have not been any official airlines in or out of Somalia.”
He describes his first impression of America as “strange”, recalling the time his family first landed in New York. “I remember asking my father, ‘so this is America, huh?’ How is it possible that there’s this great big building that’s vacant and there’s homeless people sleeping in front of it?” K’Naan didn’t know a scrap of English, but was nevertheless impressed by the prolific hip-hop scene. Long regarded as the true expression of the modern African-American, hip-hop was something the rapper could understand, given his own life experiences. “The people that were making hip-hop records, who were speaking about this destitution, made me relate in a way because they seemed to be in exile in their own land,” he explains. “And that’s what I sense in the music, and that was the most attractive thing. In fact, it helped teach me the culture. For example, Nas said in one rhyme: ‘I want all my daughters to be like Maxine Waters’. I’d then go and learn about Maxine Waters, which lead to me Toni Morrison. Then I’d read about that. So it helped a lot.”
He was already writing poetry, so taking up hip-hop was a natural step. But was becoming a rapper his ultimate ambition? “The thing is, I only had ambition for the most illuminating feeling which I could not possibly articulate at that time,” he admits, vaguely. “I didn’t know what, but I had an ambition for something. Something had to be done, and it always kind of led to my experiences at home and how young Somali kids felt. No one could understand them, and it made me feel ferocious about something, but I didn’t know what it was going to be.”
K’Naan names Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Fela Kuti and Bob Marley as influences, but it took listening to revolutionary rappers like Rakim, Nas, Gangstarr and Grand Puba to help the Somalian perfect his craft. “Whenever I hear ‘New York State of Mind’ on the Illmatic album I remember listening to how Nas described the ghetto of America and his neighbourhood,” he recalls. “He was precise. He was like a novelist and I thought that if he could do this with the America ghetto; it might be possible to write about Somalia lividly.”
K’Naan got the chance to perform at the UN’s 50th anniversary in 1999, and he took the risk of citing the organisation for poor operations during the Mogadishu conflict. His brave criticism caught the attention of the Senegalese superstar Youssou N’Dour, who enlisted K’Naan for his 2001 Building Bridges album, featuring musicians living in exile.
For the most part, K’Naan’s own music stays faithful to Africa, and he explains that his memories of Somalia were key in formulating his unique style. “I think that my experiences have been… steering.” He pauses. “They are not background experiences, but more the forefront of my life. I lived in Canada and the US for half my life, but really I lived there as a Somalian. You know my longing for home had always been there with me. And I always felt, regardless of what citizenship they were able to afford me, that I was still in exile. I still feel that way because, you know, home is not a geographical location. It’s a feeling. So for me, that was the thing that really contributed to my poetry, my writings, and my music being the way it sounds.”
There’s an intelligence to K’Naan’s musings, and it’s hard to find an ounce of insincerity in his thoughtful proverbs and revolutionary rhetoric, especially when it comes to the topic of his album The Dusty Foot Philosopher. On the album’s title, he says, “It’s one part dedication to a friend of mine, who I thought of as the dusty-foot philosopher, who died. But the second part is that I was thinking of how the West portrays Africa. When they show Africa, especially in those programmes that come on late at night, pleading for help, they often show children. And when they show children, they often pan the camera to their feet, and it’s always dusty which is to portray poverty. But, I thought, I used to have those same feet. And now the people who are filming and making these statements to their culture, they respect me. I now have a place in their lives, the very people who are portraying the same child. I wanted to call that child The Dusty Foot Philosopher, the one who is articulate about the universe, but doesn’t have anything.”
When K’Naan raps on the album, he often pleads for Somalia. “Blues for the Horn” is a lament for what has become of home, while the striking “What’s Hardcore” reveals his frustrations over the situation, singing, “I’m a spit these verses because I feel annoyed/ And I’m not going to quit until I fill the void/ If I rhymed about home and got descriptive/ I’d make 50 Cent look like Limp Bizkit.”
K’Naan may not been keen to glorify the violence he’s witnessed, but American hip-hop is a market where tales of violence often prove to be chart-topping material. “I love the music,” he says, carefully. “But it’s certainly not my sacred place. It is not just one form of art. There’s a lot to be said about it, and every once in a while, something comes that makes me love hip-hop again.” He feels rappers back home aren’t representing they way they should. “Africans love music, they love hip-hop, but I’m still waiting for something else that legitimately explains us,” he says. “I’m more interested in traditional artists now.”
K’Naan doesn’t fancy his chances of breaking into the American rap market, although he’s already created a buzz: he featured on a single with M-1, a member of the notorious Dead Prez, there’s another support slot on the Damian Marley tour, and his rap style is regularly being compared to Eminem. “I’m not naive to think that (my music) will have a sweeping impact everywhere,” he says. “But I do know that I have been so far, been very fortunate to play around the world, and have been introducing this story and the things that I am concerned with, to people who had no idea. And then, who knows where that leads?”
He plans more travelling and to further his campaign in other countries. Another conflict in Mogadishu began earlier this year, and hundreds of civilians have been killed in what residents have described as the worst fighting in a decade. “It really seems like it’s outside the power of these underprivileged, poor people, who are just kind of being pawned into killing one another,” he says, shaking his head. “Big powers who have a lot of money are investing money into our destruction yet again.”
But you get the feeling that when all is said and done, he would like to go back home to Somalia. He doesn’t deny it. “We live kind of under a banner of a suspicious culture,” he complains. “This culture is very suspicious of us, in the West, as African people. I’m from an experience where it’s warmer, and pleasant, and human and those are the things you can’t find anywhere else. You can’t go in an elevator in Somalia and not elaborately greet the person, and worry about their well-being. You don’t eat if your neighbour doesn’t eat in Somalia. I hope one day I can be amongst people where I don’t have to historically justify my presence. I just want to roam and be human.”
K’Naan plays Somerset House, London WC2 (020-7845 4600) with Damian Marley on 11 July (www.thedustyfoot.com)
Source: Belfast Telegraph, June 30, 2006
