K'Naan videos
Feat., K Naan, K'NAAN
Somali-Canadian hip hop artist, born 1978 in Mogadishu, Somalia. When the civil war in Somalia reached the capital Mogadishu, his parents emigrated with their 13 year old son to Harlem, New York City, before moving to Canada, to the Toronto (Etobicoke) neighbourhood Jamestown in Rexdale, joining a small Somali-Canadian community, from where he started his musical career. His aunt Magool is revered as being one of Somalia's most famous singers of all time, while his grandfather Haji Mohamed was a renown poet back in Somalia. K'naan is a Muslim and his name means "traveler" in the Somali language. K'naan became a friend and associate of Canadian promoter Sol Guy, who helped him secure a speaking engagement before the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 1999, where K'naan performed a spoken word piece criticizing the UN for its failed aid missions to Somalia. One of the audience members, Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour, was so impressed by the young MC's performance and courage that he invited him to contribute to his 2001 album Building Bridges, a project through which K'naan was able to tour the world. This project led to his work at other UN events, as well as the Montreal Jazz Festival and the Halifax Pop Explosion. It also helped him meet Canadian producer Jarvis Church and his Track & Field team in 2002, who produced his debut album The Dusty Foot Philosopher, which was released in 2005 to critical acclaim. In 2006, it won the Juno Award for Rap Recording of the Year, and was nominated for the 2006 Polaris Music Prize. It also won the BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music in the newcomer category for 2007. The Dusty Foot Philosopher was re-released and re-packaged as a "Deluxe Edition" featuring new mixes and a bonus DVD in the United States (and various international territories) by the emerging media company and record label Interdependent Media in 2008. Since then, K'naan has been on tour promoting his album and working on his follow-up release, "Troubadour," his debut album for new label, A&M Octone Records. He has also collaborated with artists like Nelly Furtado, Mos Def, Will.i.am, Roots, dead prez, and Pharoahe Monch on tours such as Live 8 and Breedlove Odyssey. He also collaborated with Damian Marley on the "Welcome to Jamrock" touring session. K'naan rose to mainstream popularity by participating in the 2008 BET Awards Cypher. This was his first appearance on American television. His second studio album, Troubadour, was released on February 24, 2009 on A&M/Octone Records, distributed through Universal Music Group worldwide. The album's first single, "ABC's", was released to radio in late 2008. K'naan has featured in several video games such as Madden NFL 09 with his song ABC's, and FIFA 06 with his song "Soobax". The song "If Rap Gets Jealous", a rerecording of a track of the same name – with different verses – from The Dusty Foot Philosopher, features Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett. K'naan was also the first featured artist on X3, a collaborative project between CBC Radio 3, Exclaim! magazine and aux.tv to promote new Canadian music. In July 2010, he performed a cover of U2's "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" for iheartradio. A remixed version of K'naan's single "Wavin' Flag" was chosen as Coca-Cola's anthem for the 2010 FIFA World Cup also in the commercials in the pre-game, held in South Africa. In December 2009, K'naan performed the song live during the sponsor's FIFA World Cup Trophy Tour, which took him to 86 countries around the world.
Born in Mogadishu, Somalia, just as the civil unrest that rocked the country was beginning, rapper K'NAAN spent the early years of his life trying to avoid death and listening to the hip-hop records sent to him from America by his father, who had left Somalia earlier. When K'NAAN (whose name means "traveler" in Somali) was 13, he, his mother, and his two siblings were able to leave their homeland and join relatives in Harlem, where they stayed briefly before moving to Rexdale, Ontario, where there was a large Somali community. As soon as his English started improving he began rapping, and in tenth grade he dropped out of school and traveled around North America for two years, performing occasionally. Through his friendship with Sol Guy, part of promotion team Direct Current Media, K'NAAN was able to perform at the United Nations' 50th anniversary concert in 1999, held in Geneva, where he used his platform to publicly criticize the United Nations' handling of the Somali crisis in the 1990s. One of the audience members, Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour, was so impressed by the young MC's performance and courage that he invited him to contribute to his 2001 album Building Bridges, a project through which K'NAAN was able to tour the world. In 2002, he met Jarvis Church, part of the Track and Field Productions team that helped propel Nelly Furtado to fame, a connection that eventually led to a record. The Dusty Foot Philosopher came out in Canada in 2005, and was followed with tour spots with Mos Def and Talib Kweli, as well as a performance at Live 8. In 2007, the live album On the Road appeared and then, two years later, the album Troubadour became K'NAAN's first for the major-label A&M. After his track "Wavin' Flag" became the anthem for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, his More Beautiful Than Silence EP arrived in 2012.