Seattle Subsonic

K’naan is making people Believe at Nuemos Tonight

March 10th, 2009

It is hard to describe the music of K’naan. He is highly creative, and at times schizophrenic, he is all over the board in terms of influence and style. He goes against convention with the intent to destroy all boundries created by the mainstream music machine. At the same time he rages against said machine he is embracing it (or maybe being embraced by it). On his new record “Troubador” he bounces from track to track showing occassional glimses of greatness. The whole thing is listenable with very few missteps but when Mettalica’s Kirk Hammett comes through for the 107.7 approved “If Rap Gets Jealous” the conceptual side of things goes a bit awry in my opinion.

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K’naan was born and raised in Somalia escaping on the last day the American Embassy was open during the horrendous war there in the early 1990s. He must have seen some shit, felt the pain and heard the cries of a war Americans have never experienced. This could the making of a very disenfranchised, pissed off, and militant man but K’naan isn’t the product of his enviroment, he’s a product of hope. He preaches love, unity, and equality in uber well articulated prose cultivated during his time as a well reknowned spoken word artist. He learned to rap before he could even speak english, listening to some of the greats and copying the phonetic patterns in their delivery. He is the fucking truth.

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Tonight at 8pm at Nuemos you can catch him live.