Keinan Abdi Warsame Quotes
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Somalis really are very musically sophisticated, and they're about their own thing.
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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.
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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.
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The poetry I grew up on is really an intense form of poetry; it's so pure and powerful.
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The people of Somalia just do not have a voice. They are to me the most forgotten people in the world.
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I'm an optimist about other people. I'm not an optimist about myself.
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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.
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I don't feel political most of the time. Sometimes I'm placed in positions because no one else will go there.
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It's better to light a candle than to curse the dark In the eyes of the youth, there are question marks
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I'm writing from a place of - a center of authenticity, somewhere that only I know how to write from.
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And any man who knows a thing, knows he knows not a damn, damn thing at all...
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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.
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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.
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I learned to fire guns at the age of nine or so, but luckily was not out killing people. We zigzagged the streets to escape those trying to kill us. I guess it would have been a matter of time till I turned around with a gun myself, to go after those coming for us. But I was fortunate. The grenade incident was about an explosion which destroyed a section of my school, from a grenade that me and my cousin detonated by accident. We both lived to tell about it.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Hip-hop in Africa has been very often a duplication of an American experience, but in a context that's totally alien to it.
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Until the lion learns to speak, the tales of hunting will be weak.
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I am one of those people that's never been really cynical about life, you know.
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My life owes me. Like an overdose, I'm slowly Drifting into the arms of trouble, then trouble holds me
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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.