K’naan able

An international artist, now with an international reputation

K’naan is the type of artist we Canadians love to hold up as a cultural ambassador. If nothing else, the Somali-born, Rexdale-reared MC serves as a symbol of our national mythology, which is at best a far-off goal, at worst a hollow promise: that Canada is a rich multicultural tapestry shot through with threads that allow disparate cultures to shine.

The rapper and musician is an unconventional choice for the next great Canadian international breakout act. And yet that might be in the cards when K’naan releases Troubadour (Island/Universal), his second full-length studio album. Troubadour arrives with a torrent of buzz: K’naan was granted privileged access to Bob Marley’s home and Tuff Gong studios in Jamaica, thanks to his new-found friendship with Stephen and Damian Marley (he was an opener on the latter’s “Welcome to Jamrock” tour).

K’naan claims the most challenging thing about treading on such hallowed ground was, well, trying to forget he was treading on hallowed ground.

"How do you shut off the ideas, the assumptions… I mean, how do I forget K’naan is here, now at Bob’s house?” he chuckles. “If I was dishonest or trying to take in everything about where I was, I probably just would’ve made reggae music.”

Troubadour is a rigorously produced collection of genre-spanning songs with enough polish and sparkle to succeed on mainstream radio and enough gritty honesty to communicate K’naan’s often harrowing narratives. Those narratives, collected from both his early childhood in civil war–torn Somalia and his scuffles with violence on the mean streets of Scarborough, are likely what will end up catalyzing K’naan’s breakout: he’s a survivor with an incredible real-life story, one that often puts him in the awkward position of serving as an emissary for all Somali refugees.

“But the truth is,” K’naan says, slowly, “that I really feel uncomfortable so long as we’re discussing my personality and my personal life. They just don’t feel that special. When it comes to my music, that’s something else. I meet people — Somali elders and young people alike — who truly appreciate that I am that person in the spotlight for them. They see that I’m not doing it in the wrong manner, that their dignity is upheld.”

Troubadour boasts a number of high-profile cameos, ranging from Mos Def and Chali 2na to Maroon 5’s Adam Levine. But the weirdest guest has to be Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, who contributes great big Hammett-sized riffs on the revamped version of “If Rap Gets Jealous.”

K’naan says he was blown away by the deep respect his collaborators had for his music.

“I was emailing back and forth with Kirk the other day,” he says. “He’s chilling in Hawaii. I said, ‘Hey you know that song we collaborated on? They’re playing it everywhere on the radio in the States!’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, ‘cause it’s a great fucking song!’ I was trying to insinuate that they were into it because of him, but he kept saying, ‘It’s a great fucking song!’”

At the risk of sounding crass, there’s something profoundly affecting about the intense joyfulness of K’naan’s music. Even when he’s relating extreme trauma on Troubadour, whether on the rallying “Waving Flag,” or “Fatima,” which tells the story of a young girl’s death, his lush melodies soar with hope. His rhymes are captivating, in part because they rock with a strikingly unique rhythm that comes from having absorbed the cadences of several languages, from Somali dialect to the idiom of old-school hip-hop.

“Sometimes I’ll see remarks from fans of, you know, the usual US hip-hop music,” he laughs, “and they’ll say, ‘I like his music, I just don’t understand his rhythms.’ That’s because African rhythms are so much more advanced than Western rhythms — they know how to skate around a beat and come back and be cool about it.”

K’naan claims he was originally drawn to hip-hop because it reminded him of the love of metaphor that’s inherent to the oral tradition in Somali culture. He says that Somali musicians and poets “pride themselves on being really, really good.

“You’ll listen to a line from a poem and it’ll have four different significances going on at once; the poet knows he’s doing that, you can picture him grinning behind the scenes. A lot of times I’ll find myself doing that, but I stop because I know people will think I’m crazy.”

It seems selfish and rather silly to try and stake a claim in this dude — a poet whose music combines African rhythms, classic hip-hop, Somali melodies and timeless pop hooks — as our own. The truth is, whether or not K’naan planted some roots in Rexdale, he’s a traveller (that’s the translation of his name) whose story started long before he came to Canada.

Nevertheless, he says that something about Toronto will always feel like a kind of home.

“I had a place in LA for a while, because I was working on a lot of things and recording, and there was no physical way I could be anywhere else. And, you know, LA’s beautiful, it’s got a lot of great weather. That’s it. That’s all I felt.

“One day I sat in a restaurant and this blanket of depression came over me,” he continues, “and I thought, ‘All I need now is to walk down Queen Street.’ There’s nothing like Queen Street in LA — nothing as gritty, as real, as bohemian…. That was the first time I realized how connected I was to Toronto. It’s just a place for me to go whenever I feel like I need to hide out. It’s great corner to disappear and be alone when I want to.”



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