With his unique voice but still truly authentic style, K'NAAN brings an enormous dose of realness and urgency to the hip-hop world in 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 ghetto's to slums, from drug dealers to war lords, from 9mm and eagle 440's to AK's and rocket propelled grenades. "Where I'm from there are no police or fire fighters, we start riot's by burning car tires." from K'NAAN's song entitled "What's Hardcore".

As hip-hop passes the quarter century mark, it has evolved in ways no one could have imagined. It has gone from under-ground to mainstream, from black to multi- racial, from American to international. It has reached the very 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.