K'naan

Originally released in 2005 in Canada, this Deluxe Version of The Dusty Foot Philosopher is the first domestic US release of the award winning debut album from K'naan. The new version includes newly mixed and recorded versions of three songs, a bonus track featuring M-1 from dead prez, new artwork, and a bonus DVD. The DVD includes all the music videos from the album, a video introduction to K'naan and an episode of 4Real TV on Kenya hosted by K'naan. Interdependent Media will proudly release this special edition on June 24th, 2008.

K'naan has been touring non-stop since the release of this album in 2005. The critical acclaim he received led to tours with Nelly Furtado, Mos Def, The Roots, dead prez, Pharoahe Monch, and Damian Marley. In 2007 he released The Dusty Foot on the Road (Wrasse Records), a collection of songs he recorded during his two years of touring the world. In preparation for a new studio album due out in late summer 2008, K'naan devoted some time to re-polishing The Dusty Foot on the Road for its inaugural US release. He recorded new versions of "Wash It Down," "Strugglin,'" and "I Was Stabbed By Satan" especially for this release.

At age 9, K'naan was doing what most American kids were doing. He was hanging out on his neighborhood street corner, MC'ing for his friends, dropping Nas and Rakim verses, dreaming of a day when he would posses the lyrical skills and the rhythmic flow of his hip-hop heroes. K'naan, however, was very different from those American kids. In fact, he wasn't even an American kid at all; he was an African and he wasn't on the streets of New York or Los Angeles or Detroit. He was on the other side of the world on the dusty streets of Mogadishu, Somalia. And although he was rapping verses from Nas and Rakim and all the other great American MC's with an almost eerie attention to detail and pronunciation, he could not speak English.

As hip-hop passes the quarter century mark, it has evolved in ways no one could have imagined. It has gone from underground to mainstream, from black to multi-racial, from American to international. It has reached the furthest corners of the world and planted its seeds in the souls of kids from every country. K'naan is a child of that generation, the first generation of true hip-hop children who have grown out of a very foreign soil.

With his unique voice and authentic style, K'naan brings an enormous dose of realness and urgency to the hip-hop world at a time when people are desperate for it. From a personal and cultural history rooted in poetry (being the grandson of one of Somalia's most famous poets), K'naan widens the traditional hip-hop perspective from ghettos to slums, from drug dealers to warlords, from 9mm and Desert Eagle 440's to AK's and rocket-propelled-grenades. K'naan illustrates this in "What's Hardcore" with these lyrics: "Where I'm from there are no police or fire fighters / we start riots by burning car tires."

Leaving Somalia at the age of thirteen on what turned out to be the very last commercial flight, amidst a crumbling society and the end to this day of any form of central government, K'naan carried with him a very strong sense of purpose. It is this sense of purpose as well as his amazing lyrical gift that has made him a beacon for other artists as well as those dedicated to positive global change. After gaining notoriety as a skilled MC and spoken word poet, K'naan was invited to Geneva to perform a spoken word piece at the 50th anniversary of the UN Commission for Refugees in 2001. In front of some of the biggest suits in the world, K'naan brought the house down with his politically charged poem. K'naan explains, "I basically called out the UN for its failed relief mission in Somalia." The audience was so moved by the piece that they gave K'naan a standing ovation and African superstar Youssou N'Dour, who was also in attendance, loved the performance so much that he invited K'naan to Senegal to record with him. Similarly, in Toronto in 2002 while recording a verse for a War Child benefit track entitled "Keep the Beat," K'naan's unique flow caught the attention of artist/producer Jarvis Church, who comprises one half of the Grammy award winning production team Track and Field (Nelly Furtado). They soon formed a creative partnership that would lead to the creation of K'naan's first full-length album, The Dusty Foot Philosopher.

K'naan creates urgent music with a message as if his whole existence depended on it. "Soobax," produced by Track and Field, is percussion-fuelled protest music at its finest. It's more than a song. "It's something people raise arms for," explains K'naan. "The term 'soobax' actually means to "come out" so when I recorded it, I imagined myself being in front of gunmen and I'm communicating directly to them." He adds, "Sixty-year-old women in Canada jam to that song because it says things they couldn't say. When my brother heard the song he said that it's the first song he'd heard of mine that could get me killed." The backing music on "The African Way" was supplied by a group of nomadic musicians K'naan ran into and recorded in a restaurant in Mombassa, Kenya. "Wash It Down" is an innovative track produced entirely out of the processed sounds of crashing water.

Says K'naan, "One of those homeless kids in the 'Soobox' video that was dancing actually hid his machete in his coat pocket when he heard my music. He then started to dance and put his machete away under a tree. That's why my long term goal is to use whatever fame I get to help change the situation in my region…not to own a clothing line like some of my rap peers".

By most accounts, The Dusty Foot Philosopher is well on his way.