Knaan Quotes

When I get older, I will be stronger

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.

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

It was interesting to find how dominating American vision is all over the world. I think there’s something to be said about the world’s mindset and its economics and all of that, and I think it affects the way we see ourselves and it affects music.

My life owes me. Like an overdose, I’m slowly
Drifting into the arms of trouble, then trouble holds me

I think it’s a mistake to work on success in career. I’ve worked on my passions obsessively. How can I say what I want to say more precisely than the last time I said it? Success is such an elusive concept. When you work for it, I think you get it in a way you might regret it.

It is the very survival of the streets that makes children pick up guns in Somalia, not some older, wide-eyed rebel leader. My intimate experiences during these years are something which I have shared with people through my music but am very careful about how they are addressed.

And any man who knows a thing, knows he knows not a damn, damn thing at all.

I’m not about trying to get and get and get. I feel good when I get, but I kind of feel better when I give.

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

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

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.

There’s definitely anger, the demand of more from the world, a demand for justice. There’s no other way I can perform the vocals than the way you hear them. It’s not just the words, it’s what is being felt.

When I get older, I will be stronger
They’ll call me freedom, just like a Wavin’ Flag

Until the lion learns to speak, the tales of hunting will be weak.

It’s better to light a candle than to curse the dark
In the eyes of the youth, there are question marks

To reach your goal authentically is probably, in the end, going to mean much more to you than having reached it in a false way.

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.