Lyrics Case Study: K'Naan

Song Synopsis: 'What's Hardcore'
Lyrics 'What's Hardcore'

Learn More About Somalia
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Challenges Facing Somali Youth In Toronto

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About the Artist - K'Naan:
©EYE MAGAZINE/Mike Doherty, February 10th 2005
K'Naan has spent a lifetime cheating death. You wouldn't know it to see him -- the 27-year-old hip-hopper is affable, soft-spoken and quick to laugh, and his biggest complaint is the cold Toronto winter. Listen to the stories he tells with his rhymes and a more harrowing picture emerges.

He grew up in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, which was torn apart by warlords when K'Naan was 10. "It was like a fire coming into your house," he says, "and you not having a place to exit. You were certain you were going to die, 'cause everyone else was [dying]. I imagined I would not be fortunate enough to live, let alone escape Somalia, so we were just running around careless and wild in the streets."

At 11, he and his three best friends were running away from armed gunmen; his friends got killed, but he evaded the bullets. His brother, who was two years older, was imprisoned for blowing up the federal court building. The day he was to face the firing squad, he escaped with the aid of his aunt, Magool, one of East Africa's most famous singers. Meanwhile, the boys' mother had been visiting the US embassy every day, pleading for a visa so they could flee the war torn country and join their relatives in America. The day the embassy was packing up, a staff member finally took pity and stamped her visa. She and her two boys flew out on the last plane out of the country.

In Somali, K'Naan means "traveler." From the age of seven, he had been listening to American hip-hop, memorizing Rakim's rhymes phonetically -- even though he didn't know a scrap of English -- and dreaming of escape. The records, sent over by his estranged father in New York City, connected him to another world, and spoke to him of another oral tradition, in a more affluent culture.

When his family resettled in Harlem, K'Naan was amazed by its size but unfazed by its violence. He recalls, "One day, we were eating dinner ... outside of our window, there was a gunshot. My uncle ducked, and me and my brother didn't flinch. My uncle was like, 'You see the guns here' You have to be careful.' And my brother said, 'What' That was popcorn.' Because in Mogadishu, handguns aren't considered dangerous. You have to shoot something heavy: AK-47s or RPGs (rocket propelled grenades)...."

The following year, K'Naan, his mother and his brother moved to the Somali community in Rexdale, Ont. As his English skills improved, he began devising raps of his own. He would "sit on those big garbage boxes and bang on them with the rhythm, and start rhyming off the top to kids. They thought it was fascinating. They were like, 'Man, you're going to be the first Somali rapper ever.' It turned out true."

K'Naan's flow has something of Eminem's venom, Quasimoto's intense, helium-fuelled delivery, k-os' conviction and Woody Allen's barbed self-deprecation. Gangsta-rap posturing is absurd for a man from one of the most violent 'hoods in the world.
As he puts it, "All Somalis know that gangsterism isn't to brag about. The kids that I was growing up with [in Rexdale] would wear baggy [track] suit pants, and a little jacket from Zellers or something, and they'd walk into school, and all the cool kids would be like, 'Ah, man, look at these Somalis. Yo, you're a punk!' And the other kid won't say nothing, but that kid, probably, has killed 15 people."

K'Naan's "prize possession," as he puts it, is the fact that he's never killed anyone. And, oddly, the closest he's ever come to being killed was not in Somalia, but Toronto.
"Just about a year ago," he says, "I was sitting in front of my house, talking on the phone to a girl. There was a drive-by, and about 15 shots hit around my head and body area -- they cracked the wall behind me. [The gunmen were] just trying to kill somebody, 'cause somebody from their neighbourhood got killed by somebody from our neighbourhood. Some punk dudes, trying to shoot all cool. You can't really hit your target sideways.

"My mother patted me for blood. She said, 'How unfortunate would it be to have left Mogadishu and never been shot, and shot here?"

Learn more about K'Naan online at: http://www.thedustyfoot.com/

Watch M-1's new video 'Till We Get There' featuring K'Naan

Sony Synopsis: 'What's Hardcore?'

'What's Hardcore, to me, is an ongoing, old and living sentiment which is popular in the thinking of "third world" youth.' Especially those who come from strong circumstances and have had to migrate to the western world.' At some point or another, those of us who fell in love with hip hop said under our breaths, "if only they knew what we've had to live through".' That is of course when all of us have' had just about enough of hearing how tough life' in America was.' This is not to say I do not acknowledge the struggles within some of these communities, it is to say that they are not the only struggling communities.' For me, writing this song was to say out loud what for so long we kept under our breaths.''

'Also, the descriptive aspect of the song, for example, "the walls are white washed with tin roof tops", comes from wanting to write in the tradition of Nas's 'Ilmatic'.' Where he did an incredible job introducing to the world the look and culture of the Metro Housing.' But what I wanted to do was describe the slums of Africa, in What's Hardcore and generally in my music, hopefully as well as Nas described the ghetto in his.' -K'Naan

Lyrics 'What's Hardcore?'

I put a pen to the paper,
this time as visual as possible,
guns blast at the hospital,
the walls are white washed with tin rooftops,
to show love you lick two shots,
it's dangerous man,
journalists hire gunmen there's violent women,
kids trust no one cause fire burnt them,
refugees die in boats, headed for peace,
is anyone scared of death here' Not in the least,
I walk by the old lady selling coconuts under the tree,
life is cheap here but wisdom is free,
the beach boys hang on the side, leaning with pride,
scam artists and gangsters fiendin to fight,
I walk with three kids that can't wait to meet God
lately, that's Bucktooth, Mohamed and Crybaby,
what they do everyday just to eat lord have mercy,
strapped with an AK and they blood thirsty...

So what's hardcore? Really, are you hardcore? Hmm.
So what's hardcore? Really, are you hardcore? Hmm.

We begin our day by the way of the gun,
rocket propelled grenades blow you away if you front,
we got no police ambulance or fire fighters,
we start riots by burning car tires,
they looting, and everybody start shooting,
bullshit politicians talking bout solutions, but it's all talk,
you can't go half a block with a road block,
you don't pay at the road block you get your throat shot,
and each road block is set up by these gangsters,
and different gangsters go by different standards,
for example, the evening is a no go,
unless you wanna wear a bullet like a logo,
in the day you should never take the alleyway,
the only thing that validates you is the AK,
they chew on Jad it's sorta like coco leafs,
and there ain't no police...

So what's hardcore? Really, are you hardcore? Hmm.
So what's hardcore? Really, are you hardcore? Hmm.

I'm a spit these verses cause I feel annoyed,
and I'm not gonna quit till I fill the void,
if I rhyme about home and got descriptive,
I'd make Fifty Cent look like Limp Biskit,
it's true, and don't make me rhyme about you,
I'm from where the kids is addicted to glue,
get ready, he got a good grip on the machete,
make rappers say they do it for love like R-Kelly,
it's HARD, harder than Harlem and Compton intertwined,
harder than harboring Bin Laden and rewind,
"to that earlier part when I was kinda like"
we begin our day by the way of the gun,
rocket propelled grenades blow you away if you front,
we got no police ambulances or fire fighters,
we start riots by burning car tires,
they looting, and everybody starting shooting...

So what's hardcore? Really, are you hardcore?Hmm.
So what's hardcore? Really, are you hardcore? Hmm.