K'NAAN was featured in 4REAL Kenya. At age 9, K'NAAN was doing what most American kids were doing. He was hanging out on his neighborhood street corner, MCing for his friends, dropping...

K'NAAN was featured in 4REAL Kenya. At age 9, K'NAAN was doing what most American kids were doing. He was hanging out on his neighborhood street corner, MCing for his friends, dropping Nas and Rakim verses, dreaming of a day when he would posses the lyrical skills and the rhythmic flow of his hip hop heroes.

K'NAAN, however was very different from those American kids. In fact, he wasn’t even an American kid at all, he was an African; and he wasn't on the streets of New York or Los Angeles or Detroit, he was on the other side of the world on the dusty streets of Mogadishu Somali. And although he was rappin verses from Nas and Rakim and all the other great American MC's with an almost eerie attention to detail and pronunciation, he could not speak English.

As hip hop passes the quarter century mark, it has evolved in ways no one could have imagined. It has gone from underground to mainstream, from black to multiracial, from American to international. It has reached the very furthest corners of the world and planted its seeds in the souls of kids from every country. K'NAAN is a child of that generation, the first generation of true hip hop children who have grown out of a very foreign soil.

With his unique voice but still truly authentic style, K'NAAN brings an enormous dose of realness and urgency to the hip hop world in a time when people are desperate for it. From a personal and cultural history rooted in poetry (being the grandson of one of Somalia’s most famous poets ), K'NAAN widens the traditional hip hop perspective, from ghettoes to slums, from drug dealers to war lords, from 9mm and eagle 440s to AKs and rocket propelled grenades. "Where I’m from there are no police or fire fighters, we start riots by burning car tires,” from K'NAAN’s song entitled "What's Hardcore."

Leaving Somalia at the age of thirteen on what turned out to be the very last commercial flight to ever do so, amidst a crumbling society and the end to this day of any form of central government, K’NAAN carried with him a very strong sense of purpose. It is this sense of purpose as well as his amazing lyrical gift, which has made him a beacon for other artists as well as those dedicated to global change.

In 2001, after gaining notoriety as a skilled mc and spoken word poet, K'NAAN was invited to Geneva to perform a spoken word piece at the 2001 50th anniversary of the UN Commission for Refugee's. In front of some of the biggest suits in the world, K'NAAN brought the house down with his politically charged poem, K'NAAN explains, "I basically called out the UN for its failed relief mission in Somalia." The audience was so moved by the piece that they gave K'NAAN a standing ovation and African superstar Youssou N'Dour who was also in attendance loved the performance so much that he invited K'NAAN to Senegal to record with him.

Similarly, in Toronto in 2002 while recording a verse for a War Child benefit track entitled "Keep the Beat.” K'NAAN’s unique flow caught the attention of artist/producer Jarvis Church, one half of the Grammy award winning production team Track and Field (Nelly Furtado). From there began a creative partnership that would lead to K'NAAN’s first full length album "The Dusty Foot Philosopher."

K'NAAN creates urgent “music with a message” because his whole existence depends on it.