Somali rapper K'Naan fired his first gun at the age of eight. At 11, he found a hand grenade, detonated it by mistake and blew up half his school. Later, he saw three of his closest friends shot dead. The city was the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and the year was 1990, at which point the country was plunged into civil war. At 13, K’naan escaped to the US, armed only with the little English he'd gleaned from a copy of Eric B & Rakim's Paid in Full.
“If I rhymed about home and got descriptive it would make 50 Cent look like Limp Bizkit,' he raps on the track 'What's Hardcore?'. K'Naan is unique. He is a hip-hop artist who turns an often predictable and bombastic style upside down; he writes tough but thoughtful and even sensitive lyrics, and leaves you feeling better about the long-term prospects for anything from Somalia to rap music.
