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All Quotes by author - K'naan
" Art isn't held with the same high regard as it is after success. In any country, in any language, you're a loser if you're making music until you prove otherwise. "
Language
Success
Music
" From the stage, I can reach a large audience, and you learn from being on stage how much a song reaches, what extent of the crowd a song can reach. I write in a way that can reach most of the audience, but I also wanted to have truly intimate moments as well, many intimate moments, more so than the big moments. "
Moments
I Can
Learn
" Hip-hop in Africa has been very often a duplication of an American experience, but in a context that's totally alien to it. "
Alien
Experience
Hip-Hop
" I am one of those people that's never been really cynical about life, you know. "
Know
Life
People
" I don't feel political most of the time. Sometimes I'm placed in positions because no one else will go there. "
Sometimes
Time
Will
" 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. "
Artist
Broken
Enjoy
" I faced quite a few challenging times, and in front of those, I was more positive than some people not facing those conditions. I'm actually of the belief now that it is that struggle that offers you that open-hearted hope. "
Positive
You
Hope
" I have moments of darkness, of anger, and moments of rage. They do creep up at the most inopportune times. Not to recognize that in my music would give people a sense of sainthood that I don't necessarily have or even want to have. "
Anger
Darkness
Moments
" I know that often times a lot of people who work in music, whether they be labels and so on or even artists, want personal recognition. We want to be recognized for something, for what we did. I'd rather my song be recognized for what it's doing and that's important. It's not so important how many people know me. "
Song
People
Music
" I'm an optimist about other people. I'm not an optimist about myself. "
About
Optimist
Other
" 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. "
Feel
Trying
Good
" I'm writing from a place of - a center of authenticity, somewhere that only I know how to write from. "
Writing
Place
Only
" 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. "
Work
Think
You
" It's not really that I'm interested in filmmaking. I'm interested in the instrument of it, you know. "
You
Filmmaking
Know
" 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. "
Vision
World
Music
" It was not my dream to be an artist. How could it have been? I thought, artist, much like a leader, was something you either were or weren't. Never something you set out to be. "
Dream
Leader
Thought
" 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. "
More
Music
Own
" My question about my art and my music has always been, 'Am I good, or am I good because?' I'm not the artist who wants to have the 'because' attached. "
Good
Always
Artist
" Somalis really are very musically sophisticated, and they're about their own thing. "
Own
Musically
Really
" The only way I see the world now is through coming out of and growing up and living in Somalia. In the time of war, everyone was basically trying to live and manage the best they could. But you also had another period which was not a hard time at all - it was just a beautiful time. I lived in both eras. "
Live
Beautiful
World
" The people of Somalia just do not have a voice. They are to me the most forgotten people in the world. "
Me
Forgotten
Voice
" The poetry I grew up on is really an intense form of poetry; it's so pure and powerful. "
Powerful
Poetry
Pure
" The problem is that rap is so often a caricature of its own image. Nobody comes to the table with the seriousness of the effect that it can have; nobody is prepared for that. "
Image
Table
Nobody
" 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. "
Mean
Reach
You
" 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. "
World
Voice
Speak
" You want to reach people, but you also want to reach them in the most authentic way. You now have a mass market and an audience that's listening, but they're in love with a song that means absolutely nothing to you. "
Want
Love
Listening
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