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Hip Hop as a second language: 5 Minutes with K’naan
Loading ...K’naan is no stranger to gracing a big stage. We’re talking about a guy who brought down the house when he performed his spoken word infused Hip Hop to talk about the plight of refugees at the 2001 50th anniversary of the UN Commission for Refugee’s. But for the spoken word artist/MC sharing the stage with some of Hip hop’s greats on the Rock The Bells Festival’s stage is still an honor. “It’s amazing, man. There’s something about it. A couple of the people that are on the bill are people that I came up listening to. So to be playing with them is a beautiful thing.”
K’naan’s journey to Hip Hop’s largest festival stage was an interesting one to say the least. Coming from an artistic family (his aunt was one of Somalia’s most famous singers and his grandfather was a highly respected poet) its easy to see how he became involved in music. Before he could fully understand and speak English, he was memorizing the rhymes of MC’s like Rakim & Nas (whom he shares the stage with at Rock The Bells) in his homeland of Somalia. As one of the last to leave the country in the midst of civil war, he first made his home in NYC before moving to Toronto, Canada, where he became a part of the music scene. A few albums later (his latest troubadour features Mos Def and Adam Levine from Maroon 5) and he is on tour with some of Hip Hop’s legends. We caught up with him to talk about Hip Hop as second language, rocking the crowd and how you can have fun and still be seen as political.
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