Straight Outta Somalia

Tim Mosenfelder / Getty Images New hip-hop sensation K’Naan is a Somali refugee, who overcame a gun-toting childhood to rap about peace and love. He speaks to Touré about his homeland’s pirate problem, why he’s confident enough in his manhood to rap in a high voice, and how American “thug” rappers have nothing on him.

Somalian pirates took American Richard Phillips hostage for five days, pushing the ongoing pirate saga to a new level of horror—and edging that East African nation dangerously close to becoming America’s New Big Villain.

No single Superman can save the day, but it seems as if the universe knew that Somalia would need a classy, articulate ambassador at this moment. Up comes K’naan, a 31-year-old rapper/poet who grew up in Mogadishu and has lived in Toronto, Harlem, and Los Angeles. He comes from a hellish, war-torn, lawless country where guns and violence are omnipresent, but his recently released album, Troubador, doesn’t traffic in the violent imagery and hyper-macho gun talk of gang-influenced hip-hop like N.W.A. or The Game. It has the softer edges, intellectual air, and peace-seeking nature of A Tribe Called Quest or De La Soul, as well as some traditionally African sounds that might be familiar to listeners of Youssou N’Dour or Fela Kuti.

“I lived in the slums of Africa for half my life and in the ghettoes of America for the other half. So my perspective is clearer on those things.”

K’naan and his family escaped Somalia in 1991 as a civil war was dragging the country into entropy. On the last day that the American embassy in Somalia was open, they got a visa and seats on the last commercial flight out of the country. They settled in Harlem, and K’naan began learning English by listening to MCs—he’s now fluent in both English and hip-hop. He spoke to The Daily Beast from London as he took a break from recording. Somalia may be troubled, he says, but Americans should not look at his home country as an enemy.

Captain Richard Phillips was held hostage by Somalian pirates for five days and I’m curious about what that makes you think.

So it’s very unfortunate that this captain, who has a family, was in this dangerous position but the reflection has to be greater as to where that comes from and what it means—that there’s a breakdown.

America right now feels anarchic because of so many losing jobs, losing money, losing homes, lives changed beyond their will, but you’re like, I know real anarchy. This is nothing.

Yeah. The truth is that people tend to feel that their place in the universal context, wherever they stand, is the only perspective that they can look at things from. And with regard to how people are dealing with the economic crisis in America, it’s massive to them obviously. But the world has different degrees of pain and struggle and we’re dealing with the bottom of that. We’re not dealing with a place where you can have roundtable discussions about things. This is when things completely fall apart. This is when every man is for themselves.