The Dusty Foot Philosopher

K’naan’s 2005 breakout features the Eminem-esque rap of the title track; ‘Strugglin’‘, a toe-tapping ode to his Dear Departed; ‘What’s Hardcore?’, the ultimate throw-down to thug rappers (‘If I rhyme about home and got descriptive, / I’d make Fifty Cent look like Limp Bizkit’) and Soobax, an MTV Most-downloaded nominee. The video’s popularity led to an attack from k-os, one of the most prominent Canadian hip-hop artists. Following the video’s release, shot by K’naan and a film crew in Kenya, k-os rapped on the track B-Boy Jizzle: “They took cameras to Africa…oh yes the great pretenders/Religious entertainers who want to be life savers.” The album won Canada’s Juno Award for Rap Recording of the Year in 2006, and was shortlisted for the 2006 Polaris Music Prize. It was also included in The Guardian’s November 2007 list of 1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die.

Africa-savvy critic extraordinaire Robert Christgau gave the album an A, calling African hip-hop ‘awkwardly derivative’ but K’naan “some kind of miracle worker”…”After rapping phonetically to CDs mailed to Mogadishu by his father, an intellectual turned immigrant cabdriver, K’naan finally escaped Mogadishu himself and learned English from scratch—and his skills are gigantic. What accent he has is subsumed in his high, sharp, unexpectedly comedic flow.