K’naan’s sophomore album, Troubadour, has been out since late February, but while he was in London, England, in April, the conscious rapper/singer went into the studio with piano-rock band Keane to work “on a bunch of ideas.” The Somali-born, Toronto-based artist doesn’t know what the tracks will be used for. “It doesn’t matter. We just had this thing,” he says. “We connected. I like their music; they like mine and we said, ‘All right, let’s do some music.’”

On the new album, he collaborated with numerous producers and artists, including Damian Marley (who, along with Stephen Marley, let K’naan record at their father’s Tuff Gong Studios), Track and Field’s Gerald Eaton and Brian West (of the Philosopher Kings), Bruno Mars, Phillip Lawrence, Jean Daval (a.k.a. Preservation), Dante Smith (a.k.a. Mos Def), Charles Stewart (a.k.a. Chali2na) and Mike Richardson (a.k.a. Minnesota). Plus there are guest appearances by Maroon 5’s Adam Levine, Chubb Rock and Metallica’s Kirk Hammett.

Is it easy to compromise when he’s working with other people? “I don’t compromise when I’m working with other people.”

Don’t you have to? “No, I don’t see why.”

If one of you doesn’t like your ideas or you think one of theirs isn’t working, isn’t that compromise? “No, if one of their ideas isn’t working, we stop their ideas.”

Unless he thinks it’s working and they don’t. “Then we keep going,” K’naan says with a laugh.

That sounds like it’s his way then. “Absolutely,” he says, barely able to get the word out between laughter. “I don’t know if I’ve ever compromised.”

K’naan, who was born Kanaan Warsame, is the nephew of the late Magool, a famous Somali singer, and the grandson of Haji Mohamed, an esteemed poet. Performing is in his blood. He came to North America with his mother during the Somali civil war, which began in 1991, first joining his father in New York. The family then settled in Canada. K’naan was 12 at the time and couldn’t speak English but picked up a fair amount from listening to and copying rap recordings.

Even now, at age 31, K’naan has never forgotten a childhood where art and war, poverty and poetry were all a part of daily life and culture. His own lyrics draw on that. “That’s the point,” he says. “Thirteen years in Somalia is going to be more important to you than 20 years in Canada.”

K’naan, who won a 2006 Juno Award for Rap Recording of the Year for his 2005 full-length debut, The Dusty Foot Philosopher, and a 2007 BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music in the Newcomer category, worked again with producers Track and Field for much of Troubadour, but knowing them didn’t necessarily make it any easier than working with strangers. “The process is only made easier by the chemistry and the energy of the people working together,” he says. “It’s not familiarity. It’s the instant energy you get. So that energy, whether you’re familiar or not, has to always exist in the room. It doesn’t even matter that I know those guys well. If we can’t find that energy every day when we go in, then the thing doesn’t exist. So I think it’s just about that spark that happens — that always has to happen.”

The songs that didn’t have that energy simply didn’t end up on the album. K’naan doesn’t spend too much time trying to light that spark. “In the instances where I have done this for this album, and went in to work with some more popular producers or people that the label thought would be a great idea to work with, when it did not work, I spent maybe a half-hour to 45 minutes — and I left.

“I usually have an expectation that it won’t work,” he admits. “That’s kind of where I begin. It’s very exceptional that it works, so you can’t expect that. You can expect that it doesn’t work because that’s usual.”

In the case of Keane, when their musical styles and lyrical focuses are so different, K’naan says, “The first thing is the capacity for art and for your words and what you span. I think they can span from where they are to darker places, whereas I come from and I can go from where I am to where they are. It’s really just about finding the moments that we share.”

Karen Bliss is a frequent contributor to Words & Music

Uploaded Summer 2009

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