K’NAAN

If Mohammed won’t come to the music, the music must come to Mohammed.

And then he’ll bust a move.

Those in attendance for charitable concerts held in the memory of British princesses notwithstanding, most performers never get the chance to perform for heads of state–never mind ones who show up announced. However, Somalia-born and -raised, Toronto-based hip-hop artist K’naan isn’t like most performers.

"When I started to play "Soobax" he started to emerge," recalls K’naan of the final show of a six-night stand in the small East African nation of Djibouti. When he began the hit track (off his 2005 debut The Dustyfoot Philosopher) a blend of African polyrhythms and dancehall-style rapping, he was able to make out the figure of Prime Minister Mohamed Dileita making his way to a better vantage point. "You could see the secret service police people around him, and he made his way all the way to the front and he started to move."

Having traveled an amazing journey of five continents, playing some 500 shows in two years, it’s clear that K’naan takes his self-anointed title of "Dustyfoot Philosopher" quite seriously.

"People that were monumental and mysterious to us, we got to spend time and play shows with them, and we got to feel the appreciation for the music that we create," he says, referring specifically to another standout moment of the tour, when he played a post-Katrina New Orleans Jazz Festival and headliner Stephen Marley called K’naan back to the stage to perform the final song of the evening.

"The spirit of the people reminded me of my own people in Somalia–how we deal with destruction. That night we ended up playing the House of Blues and it was one of the most memorable things ever."

No wonder then he sounds a little nonplussed about his most recent support slot, opening for Nas in Vancouver the night before our interview; he acknowledges the NYC MC played an important part in his hip hop education when he was younger–K’naan’s father, who left Somalia ahead of the rest of the family, would include CDs such as Illmatic in the CARE packages he would send to his son, albums K’naan used to teach himself to rap phonetically, not yet knowing how to speak English.

But, when it comes to the title of Nas’ latest, Hip Hop Is Dead, K’naan isn’t much interested in weighing in on such trivial matters as the state and internal politics of his genre. "I don’t care–that’s really what I think," he says. "I make music and try to write words with impact [and] melodies that I care about. I don’t care about all the crazy charade of what’s hot and what’s not hot and who’s doing wrong and who’s not. They can do whatever they want."

And what K’naan wants at this point is to get back into the studio and work on a followup to his acclaimed debut–so much so that he shaved four months off the end of his tour schedule. Although he’s rather tight-lipped about the direction he plans to go in musically, listening to him talk about the current situation in Somalia, which he deems a "silent slaughter," and world affairs at large–"It’s teenage, the whole political atmosphere"–it’s likely he’ll continue to speak out about broad, serious issues, albeit, framed in a positive tip.

"For me the middle ground comes from, once you have these difficult scenarios and you’re thinking about all of theses issues, you try to write it out to try and live with it. It becomes a melodic thing, and that lifts you up. It’s always better for me–a remedy–to write. I find balance in that."