K'naan Quotes

It was not my dream to be an artist. How could it have been? I thought, artist, much like a leader, was something you either were or weren't. Never something you set out to be.

Hip-hop in Africa has been very often a duplication of an American experience, but in a context that's totally alien to it.

You want to reach people, but you also want to reach them in the most authentic way. You now have a mass market and an audience that's listening, but they're in love with a song that means absolutely nothing to you.

Art isn't held with the same high regard as it is after success. In any country, in any language, you're a loser if you're making music until you prove otherwise.

You have to let the world speak to you and then you speak, you know, so I'm in that moment now where I'm finding the world's voice.

I wasn't making music consciously when I was younger. I was a musician, but that has its own stigmas. Anywhere on the planet, it's one of the more undervalued positions.

I enjoy mediation. I think the artist's position is often to mend the things we feel are broken. Whether that's between two cultures or two thoughts. We're always trying to reach, trying to expand something.

I don't feel political most of the time. Sometimes I'm placed in positions because no one else will go there.

Somalis really are very musically sophisticated, and they're about their own thing.

I'm writing from a place of – a center of authenticity, somewhere that only I know how to write from.

My question about my art and my music has always been, 'Am I good, or am I good because?' I'm not the artist who wants to have the 'because' attached.

Quotes of the Hour

'Firelight' is a beautiful story about a lot of young women. My character, Caroline, is a girl who has a bad boyfriend, and he ends up getting her locked up and incarcerated.

Thanks so much to all the fans. To all our team, to all our wives, especially, that believe in us and that we come home to, and everybody here that's given us a shot.

The way I feel today, as long as my health is good and I can handle myself well and people still come to my concerts, still buy my CDs, I'll keep playing until I feel like I can't.

Country fans and country listeners deserve to have something better… a song that really has something to say, something that makes you feel something.

The United States and Russian security services regularly exchange information.

K'naan Quotes

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