One of the most enjoyable and slightly frustrating things about K’naan is how difficult it is to categorize his brand of music. Over the course of his second studio record he slips in and out of various genres, as though he’s trying them on for size. Sometimes it sounds like straight hip hop, sometimes sounding like smooth R&B pop, other times you can hear him channeling Bob Marley. K’naan doesn’t seem interested in fitting into any one musical scene, instead he chooses to sample just about all of them for a moment or two.
Perhaps what keeps an album like Troubadour afloat, and it’s really all over the map, is that K’naan seems a naturally born story-teller. This largely is aided by the fact that his pretty amazing life story is one that lends him air of authenticity that is often missing from similar genre-jumping artists’ work (I’m looking at you Wyclef Jean). This story started in civil war torn Mogadishu, Somalia where K’naan was born and spent most of his childhood before his family migrated to Harlem. It should come as no surprise that it’s this early life in Somalia that K’naan often brings the listener back to. What is surprising, however, is how he continues to manage to do so with a lens that is not only horrified and critical, but simultaneously nostalgic and tender about the world from which he came. On the track “Somalia” K’naan raps; “This is where the streets have no name, and the drain of sewage / You can see it in this boy how the hate is brewin’, cause when his stomach tucks in, fuck the pain is fluid”. Yet, he strikes a different tone on the track “Wavin’ Flag”, when he sings “but it’s my home, all I have known, where I got grown, streets we would roam” he strikes on a feeling that could almost be described as sentimentality. It all must be a very accurate representation of the complicated feelings and insights that K’naan must have regarding the winding road that is behind him. Another example of this is “Fatima”, which borders on sappy, but somehow manages to be both one of the most heartbreaking and at the same time uplifting tracks of the bunch. This complication is similar to the artist itself, confusing and sometimes frustrating, but at the same time immensely engaging and intriguing.
This album is a much larger production than his debut album The Dusty Foot Philosopher, and as such it packs poppier sounds, bigger beats, and bigger guest names. This at times seems to gel very well with K’naan’s more bare-bones storyteller aesthetics and at other times the two seem to be at odds, clashing with one-another. Nowhere is this more evident than the track “If Rap Gets Jealous”, this is a re-imagined release of a song from his debut, this time with some help from Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett. The sound is big and booming, it sounds like a song that was imagined to be a single as K’naan belts out the chorus, the high-profile guest gutiarist a flashy addition to a fun song. Yet the lyrics betray some more simplistic roots as K’naan boasts “so instead of getting a beat from Kanyeezy, who would probably take half my budget / I can save the back-end and send it back to Mogadishu, with my family and friends getting patched up again” for it seems to clash with the big production sound. The final product is enjoyable and catchy, but a little mixed up and at odds with itself, something that is, again, very similar to the artist himself. Noticing a recurring theme yet?
An example of where the collaborations really seem to work is on the track “I Come Prepared” which features fellow reggae rapper Damien Marley. What makes this track so fun is the smaller beat and the fact that K’naan and Damien really seem to be channeling one anothers flow much more than they’re trying to tap into Damien’s father. It really pays off as they hand the flow back off to one another and really dwell in the verses. It’s a track that will certainly having you nod your head along with the beat. The product again becomes a little more mixed on the Adam Levine boasting track “Bang Bang” which is much more of a conventional poppy brand of hip hop. This is not to say that it’s a bad track, as sometimes the track really is able to capture an almost Bad-era Michael Jackson feel, especially when Levine is belting out the chorus, but it doesn’t blend together as well, part love-song, part R&B club jam, part hip hop. One cannot say, though, that it doesn’t fit the out scatter-brained pattern of the album as a whole.
Much of the charm of K’naan and Troubadour are when he allows us to dwell in his quirkiness as an artist. This is on display in “15 Minutes Away” where K’naan riffs on the wonderful anticipation of an impending money transfer (to which some of us can relate to more than others). It also can be found on “America” where K’naan throws a Somali hook and verse over nice guest-spots by Mos Def and Chali 2na. When you hear tracks like this you are reminded that you are listening to a unique and unconventional talent, the likes of which does not come along everyday. While not the most single-ready songs on the album, this might be where K’naan is at his most comfortable, and the songs stand-out as a result.
In the end, while a bit uneven, this is an overall extremely enjoyable album. K’naan comes off as much more of a raw talent than the other immigrant hip hop stars like Akon and Wyclef Jean, but with that rawness comes a real feeling of sincerity that is very endearing. And while it is perhaps not quite the standout that debut album The Dusty Foot Philosopher was, Troubadour definitely shows some growth as an artist. It’s unique, it’s fun, it’s heartbreaking, it’s uplifting, it’s probably the best hip hop release of the new year. Well, that is if you call it hip hop, at least.
SCORE: 3.8 out of 5.0
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