Meet the Somalian who'll be rapping up the soccer World Cup
When Coca-Cola announced they'd chosen Somalian rapper K'naan to spearhead the music for their 2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa campaign, it immediately put one of the music world's best-kept secrets firmly in the global spotlight.
Already the buzz around K'naan had been building in 2009 - with even the notoriously limelight-hogging Kanye West giving the Somalian-born artist living in Canada a hefty and widely noticed punt when he posted the video for K'naan's song America on his massively followed blog http://www.kanyeuniversecity.com/blog).
What's more, uniformly good reviews for K'naan's most recent album Troubadour came rolling in after its release earlier this year, with Rolling Stone magazine describing him as someone who "thinks like Bob Marley, flows like Eminem and mixes African music with conscious hip-hop, unabashed pop and even metal".
Against the background of this growing momentum, it came as no surprise to many insiders and fans when K'naan's deal was announced. They know that the boy who escaped the clutches of civil war in Mogadishu and hustled his way into a music career in Canada - while never rejecting his heritage - deserves the attention of music fans around the world.
K'naan's ascendency into the mainstream is set to come on the back of Wavin' Flag, of which a remix will be the soundtrack for Coca-Cola's 2010 Fifa World Cup campaign - including its television commercials, the current Fifa World Cup Trophy Tour (a 225-day, 134017km journey that began in September and takes in every country in Africa) and during Coca-Cola's programme of events from June 11 to July 11 2010.
It may seem like a daring choice, pinning such a substantial campaign on a Muslim rapper raised in one of Africa's most war-ravaged countries. But selecting K'naan Warsame is actually a stroke of genius.
Not only does the new version of Wavin' Flag have all the ingredients of an uplifting, tear-inducing and, yes, flag-waving stadium filler but in K'naan the global giant also has a spokesperson who is articulate, thoughtful, and still very much an African, despite having lived in North America for more than a decade (he ended up there after he and his mom boarded the last commercial flight leaving Mogadishu in 1991, headed for the US). In fact, so considered are K'naan's opinions that he recently started writing opeds for the liberal online journal The Huffington Post and successfully deflected criticisms about his decision to join the softdrinks campaign which played out on Twitter.
K'naan's a prolific Twitterer which adds power to his increasing standing as one of Africa's most potent music figureheads. It also subtly underscores the fact that there are soldiers for a new army of Africans prepared, in the way of Youssou N'Dour or Angelique Kidjo or our own Vusi Mahlasela, to speak out on the pressing issues facing the continent while making some truly fantastic music.
Although he has the biggest platform, West is not the only big name turning people onto K'naan. Damian Marley and Mos Def are also believers of the 31-year-old artist, and Troubadour features contributions by Metallica's Kirk Hammett (on the guitar-scorching and cleverly written If Rap Gets Jealous) and Maroon 5's Adam Levine who turns up on Bang Bang.
In fact, it was a tussle between Marley and Mos Def that saw one of Troubadour's standout tunes - America - actually make it onto the album.
"I recorded America initially just with me," K'naan reveals. "Then Mos Def got a hold of it . and the next time I saw him he was quoting the lyrics. He told me he'd heard I wasn't sure about putting it on the album and said if I didn't use it, he would. Then I got a phone call from Damian Marley saying he'd heard I wanted to give the song to Mos Def but insisting that if I didn't use it I should give it to him for his album. I said 'ok you're both my friends so I'll just put it on my album'!"
What makes Troubadour such a cool album is K'naan's lyrics that tell a very visual story, in the way of a balladeer or the words of his grandfather, the well-known Somalian poet Haji Mohamed.
There are love songs like the achingly sad Fatima, a tale about a childhood love cruelly abducted by gunmen but who, K'naan pleads, should be remembered with love ("I don't want you to shed a tear/'cause this here, it's a celebration/ we're not mourning/we're celebrating"). There are hard-hitting tales of what it was like growing up in Mogadishu as it teetered towards anarchy after the fall of Mohamed Siad Barre's government in 1991. Two of these are ABC, featuring Chubb Rock, and T.I.A., which is probably K'naan's biggest hit to date detailing, in often brazen style, the differences between US rappers and their thug posturing and growing up as a boy in the gun-crazed chaos of Mogadishu.
But, like the superb book on a "lost boy of Sudan", What is the What by Dave Eggers, K'naan doesn't paint a rose-tinted picture of what it means to be a Somalian living in exile.
"You know those socially inadequate Somalis/who walk in uninvited in your VIP," he raps in I Come Prepared. Nor is he letting the world get away with painting the Somalian pirates in one-dimensional terms. "So what do you know about the pirates terrorize the ocean/to never know a simple day without a big commotion/it can't be healthy to live with such a steep emotion/and when I try and sleep, I see coffins closin'," says K'naan in Somalia.
References to his childhood filter through the album, Somalia is frequently the subject of songs and K'naan is slowly moving into a position of being a young, contemporary commentator on his country and Africa. "People who come back from Somalia tell me all the time that the music is being played and that the songs are connecting with people. The album is very honest. The people living there know it and they appreciate it. They see me as someone who can be their voice out there. Of course there is also the writer Nuruddin Farah. He's a really renowned writer - an older gentleman who writes about Somalia. But the people that connect to him are more the intellectuals and I believe my music is talking to a much broader range of people."
South Africans may know nothing of the ravages of an unrelenting out-and-out civil war that K'naan speaks about so eloquently. But with a reality that can veer between despair at crime and rampant corruption and amazement at what's being achieved here in the space of an hour, we know some of the discord K'naan describes on Troubadour.
K'naan himself feels a deep connection with South Africa.
Before Lucky Dube was murdered, K'naan had plans to record some of Troubadour with him, here in South Africa, and he namechecks him in T.I.A. as a hero. "The plan was to come to South Africa and record with Lucky," he reveals. "That was the first choice. And when he was murdered, I went to Bob Marley's house just to reflect and that is how I ended up recording the album at Bob's place."
K'naan gave an astonishing performance at Carfax in September when he was here to perform at the start of Big Brother Africa.
"I really feel the show is a journey and the band and I like to give people an experience. We like to dream and create expansive, emotional ups and downs on stage, and that is my favourite aspect of what I do. The album is great but it's a pointer to something - and that is the live show."
K'naan is planning many more visits to SA ahead of 2010 - performing his own sets and also the remixed version of Waving' Flag. Known as "The Celebration Mix", K'naan says he's "so proud of the version . It's about the one time we all get together and the world forgets its conflicts and problems and we focus on this unity and celebration. That moment is connected now to Wavin' Flag."
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