I love the new album. I think from tracks #3 -> #12 are a pretty perfect run. I don't dig ABC's or 15 Minutes Away quite as much as the rest of the album.
Also, against my better judgement: Has anyone else noticed the Jewish lyrical references throughout the album? Not, as someone suggested, the ubiquitous Rastafarian-styled Old Testament references, but actual post-Biblical Jewish references (Bar Mitzvah, dancing the hora (not as sure about this one), L'Chaim... On "Bang, Bang," he rhymes: "A very Western toaster, / She ain’t nothing Kosher," tho that might just be for Adam Levine's benefit. I'm curious though where all these more-or-less Ashkenazi lines are coming from. (Maybe his lawyer? I remember him mentioning his lawyer with a very Jewish-sounding name on one of the tracks. Like Sam Grossman, or something.)
― Mordy, Tuesday, 10 March 2009 17:45 (fifteen years ago) link
Can we agree on a definition of 'NPR Rap'?
Sike I should probably give this guy more time before I go there.
― Bonobos in Paneradise (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 10 March 2009 17:53 (fifteen years ago) link
i think i prefer the debut, tbh--a couple of the new tracks ("Wavin Flag" and "Somalia" mainly) seemed a bit too corny for my taste after the first couple of listens. but, yeah, the album holds together throughout, and sounds great besides.
― Hard Ban the Highway (Ioannis), Tuesday, 10 March 2009 17:54 (fifteen years ago) link
NPR Rap - Somalian born dude escapes war-torn country only to annoy ilx autogooners with lack of cred/flow/beats. news at 11:00.
― Hard Ban the Highway (Ioannis), Tuesday, 10 March 2009 18:00 (fifteen years ago) link
NPR Rap - Hip-hop with crossover appeal?
I don't know that's necessarily a bad thing.
― Mordy, Tuesday, 10 March 2009 18:03 (fifteen years ago) link
Dramatic life story results in good music, p. A4
― Bonobos in Paneradise (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 10 March 2009 18:19 (fifteen years ago) link
heheh, too troo.
― Hard Ban the Highway (Ioannis), Tuesday, 10 March 2009 18:29 (fifteen years ago) link
You mean like Plies?
― The-Reverend (rev), Tuesday, 10 March 2009 19:05 (fifteen years ago) link
I don't generally complain about Pitchfork reviews (and I won't here), but I think there's something very telling in today's review in terms of how people tend to deal with "foreign" music, and particularly with K'naan. In particular, the complaint seems to be that K'naan doesn't allow listeners to be tourists, and Joshua Love complains that "Still, I wish I left Troubadour feeling like I knew more about Somalia than I did going in, and I'm not entirely sure that's the case," as though K'naan's obligation is to teach his fans about Somalia, and not just that he's an artist who incidentally comes from Somalia.
― Mordy, Friday, 13 March 2009 15:03 (fifteen years ago) link
Josh is a friend, so you don't have to accept this defense, but the review points out how K'naan's talent for conjuring Somali life in his other work led Josh to expect something similar here.
― The Screaming Lobster of Challops (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 13 March 2009 15:10 (fifteen years ago) link
I don't see why expectations deferred, or subverted, are necessarily a critique.
― Mordy, Friday, 13 March 2009 15:20 (fifteen years ago) link
Why not?
― The Screaming Lobster of Challops (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 13 March 2009 15:21 (fifteen years ago) link
I take issue with "necessarily."
I guess I just feel uncomfortable with the formulation. K'naan is either being colonized as a Somalian (please give us a tour thru Somalia and teach us about your country) or as an artist (please fulfill my expectations: I want A, please deliver it), but I expect more from a music critic. At least a willingness to play with the album on its own terms. And I think the language suggests this when it says, "What's worse, someone decided this coming-out party needed a dose of star power..." as though K'naan is at the mercy of his handlers and would he be allowed to simply make his own album we'd have a wonderful native thing. But since he's been corrupted by "someone [who] decided" and this "star power," his Somalianism is being undermined.
― Mordy, Friday, 13 March 2009 15:26 (fifteen years ago) link
And it's totally bizarre that he describes "Fatima" as a Slumdog-esque song when, as far as I can tell, there's no Indian-pop in the song. So he's noting a love story narrative in a war zone. But certainly Slumdog isn't the first (or most striking) example of one of those. But both India and Somalia are somewhat exotic places for a US listener.
― Mordy, Friday, 13 March 2009 15:28 (fifteen years ago) link
good review; lousy closing line. that's how i'd rate that Pitchfork piece. i mean, c'mon, it's not like K'naan's obliged to school us poor, deprived westerners re: the horrors of living in Somalia (then or now). "a cheap holiday in other people's misery" anyone? why yes, i'll take two, thank you very much.
― \m/ suggest ban to hell \m/ (Ioannis), Friday, 13 March 2009 16:24 (fifteen years ago) link
Yeah, that is a terrible last line. The rest of the review, though, was pretty great. I like some of the songs Mr. Love doesn't, and don't like some he does, but we're precisely agreed on the general nature of the album, and I thought he got the characterizations of each of the cameos he mentions spot-on.
At's OK; at his best K'naan's as good as anyone. Somehow I hope BIG SUCCESS eludes him for a while yet so he's got some genuine material left for the difficult third album and it's not all about the gold cadillac he gave to his third ex-wife in six months... but I don't see how it can - "Dreamer" sounds like the monster hit of Summer '09 to me.
― staggerlee, Friday, 13 March 2009 23:52 (fifteen years ago) link
Troubadour persisted through the summer. Saw him live twice a few months back and he and his band really have good chemistry. They let a lot of the numbers stretch out into longer jams. Not afraid to slow them down/switch them up/totally rewrite them/turn them into poetry slams live, as the crowd and his whim dictates. His self-proclaimed debt to Fela Kuti really shone through at moments in the best way possible. Also, the band was really tight.
Anyway, revived more to ask if any of y'all have heard his new mixtape series with J. Period, The Messengers. It's a three volume tribute to Fela, Bob Marley and Bob Dylan where he remixes a bunch of their stuff with new and old verses, contextualizes his influences and throws them all together into a mesmerizing soup.
http://jperiod.com/knaan/
― Binkie & The-Dream: One is a Terius, the other's insAY!ne (Alex in Montreal), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 02:59 (fourteen years ago) link
Thanks for the heads up on the mixtape. That sounds potentially awesome.
― Mordy, Tuesday, 13 October 2009 02:59 (fourteen years ago) link
(More than potentially! I'd been idly jamming them volume by volume but they just released the all-in-one thing and it's really something else. about 50/50 new/old verses from K'naan but it's really next level, and something that balances out my initial unease with the pristine & sanitized feel of Troubadour)
― Binkie & The-Dream: One is a Terius, the other's insAY!ne (Alex in Montreal), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 03:12 (fourteen years ago) link
Better than that other recent mixtape? This album is not for sale or something?
― Mordy, Tuesday, 13 October 2009 03:13 (fourteen years ago) link
You Can't Buy This wasn't designed AS a mixtape per se...more of an odds'n'sods collection
It had the original version of Troubadour's 'Somalia' that he decided was too depressing to put on the album, an MTV Live song he improvised w/ Nelly Furtado, his website-only Kicked, Pushed freestyle and some tracks that he featured on from other people's albums (Amadou + Mariam, Mos Def, M-1).
This is a coherent listen front-to-back, much more comparable to say....Rhymefest's Man in the Mirror or other mixtapes that are designed to be heard as albums and not as disparate collections of leaks or leftovers. So yes, better, but also very different.
― Binkie & The-Dream: One is a Terius, the other's insAY!ne (Alex in Montreal), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 03:31 (fourteen years ago) link
dude is mad boring imo
― we beat so many gimp (k3vin k.), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 03:36 (fourteen years ago) link
well, recognizing that we don't like earnest/conscious/earthy/etc. these days because it's not as "authentic", he's certainly not gucci. maybe it's a live thing, but he works a crowd better than pretty much anyone i've seen this year. captivating.
actually, not just a live thing. great ear for a pop hook and a constant willingness to experiment. maybe that makes him npr-rap or HEY GUYS I'M WHITE-bait, but like...he has a strong voice and the tunes are good enough that i don't give a shit. ymmv.
― Binkie & The-Dream: One is a Terius, the other's insAY!ne (Alex in Montreal), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 03:44 (fourteen years ago) link
wow. that was...defensive of me? i dunno. i don't think i'd want to hear a whole bunch of k'naan copycats. but he does what he does well enough that he makes me care, you know?
― Binkie & The-Dream: One is a Terius, the other's insAY!ne (Alex in Montreal), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 03:46 (fourteen years ago) link
I don't think he's boring at all, he's v v entertaining even when not entirely original.
― & other try hard shitfests (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 03:51 (fourteen years ago) link
My artist of the year: http://www.citypages.com/2009-12-23/news/aby-wolf-k-naan-and-p-o-s-top-artists-of-the-year-09/5
― Pete Scholtes, Sunday, 27 December 2009 23:39 (fourteen years ago) link
And he was never heard from again.
― war mice (hardcore dilettante), Sunday, 8 May 2022 01:57 (one year ago) link