Somali-Canadian emcee/poet, K’naan’s song “Wavin’ Flag” will be used in Coca-Cola’s campaign for the 2010 FIFA World Cup which will be held in South Africa.

Check out the uplifting video below!

Another version of the song has been recorded featuring more than 15 artists that will benefit those affected by the earthquake in Haiti.  Artists that are on this version include K’naan, Drake, and Kardinal Offishall.

Click here to donate. Proceeds go to Free the Children, War Child Canada and World Vision Canada.

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The Urban Daily met with MC K’Naan and producer/DJ J.Period to discuss their project, “The Messengers” which pays tribute to Bob Marley, Fela Kuti and Bob Dylan. You can download it for free at www.jperiod.com.

J.Period & K’Naan Discuss The Messengers from The Urban Daily on Vimeo.

VIA RS:

“This venue is way more crowded than it was an hour ago,” Busta Rhymes announced, surveying Rock the Bells’ audience June 27th at the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre in suburban Chicago — the first stop on RTB’s seven-week, 10-city tour. “Let’s turn this bitch up, right now!”

Then the co-headlining MC, his perennial hypeman Spliff Star, and ace DJ Roc Raida bashed through Rhymes’ gleefully bawdy “Make It Clap.” And from that point on, savvy showman Rhymes — whose headlining performance had been immediately preceded by predictable and adventurous sets, respectively, from Big Boi and the Roots — owned Rock the Bells’ crowd.

They roared at every intro to Busta’s life-of-the-party parade of hits — “Pass the Courviosier,” “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See,” and more — and apparently forgave him for serving up only snippets of each. “He’s a tease, man,” one fan griped, but he was smiling.

Less congenial were the grumblings of festgoers who felt like victims of corporate greed. Having ponied up $30-$100 for tickets — not overly outlandish, granted, for 11 hours and 25 acts, including electrifying breakout artist K’naan, the Somali-Canadian Afro-pop rapper (who more than lived up to the hype) — attendees then found themselves hostage to the venue’s usurious concession prices. No recession-relief at this Amphitheatre: one slice of pizza and one domestic draft beer set you back nearly $20.

To find out how Nas and Damian Marley fared at Rock The Bells, click here for more!

The Somalian MC du jour has a few words to share about the ongoing hostage situation in Africa with Angela Yee.

What do YOU think? Share your thoughts in the comments section!

This summer, while much of the music world was waiting for an Ivy League reach-around from Vampire Weekend, another more potent—hell, more important—collision of African culture and American musical forms was quietly finding its way into record bins across the nation. The Dusty Foot Philosopher, the debut album from Somalia-born, Toronto-based rapper K’Naan, took almost three years to cross the border, but it could not have arrived at a better time.

It’s difficult for many TV-centric Americans to envision the great depth and complexity of Somalia, its culture and its strife—for a Yank raised on basic cable it’s easy to dismiss the entire place as a warped conflagration of Black Hawk Down and Pirates of the Caribbean. Did you know that Somalia is known as the Nation of Poets and has a long, long history of using poetry in everyday life? That it’s a culture where, more or less, everybody is expected to be an ill rapper? Somalis take old-school knowledge to such a different level in comparison that you should just trade in your Rakim tapes for a rocking chair and just call it a day. The Disorderlies VHS in your closet doesn’t seem quite so retro-hip now, does it?

The beauty of Philosopher is that through K’Naan’s deft reworking of standard hip-hop themes—guns, poverty, braggadocio—he’s able to create a juxtaposition that simultaneously affirms the genre’s greatness and calls bullshit on the facade that has been propped up by greedy, unimaginative record execs ever since the dawning of The Chronic Age. For all the emphasis on “keeping it real,” the disconnect between reality and rappers—backpackers and bling-tards alike—has been widening every record cycle with the celebrity-industrial complex dictating what people rap about and/or rap against. Y’know, the much-ballyhooed game. K’Naan, Mos Def might say, is like a shot clock, way above the game.

“If I rapped about home and got descriptive I’d make 50 Cent look like Limp Bizkit,” K’Naan rhymes on “What Is Hardcore,” as if lines like “rocket-propelled grenades blow you away if you front” weren’t already making G-Unit look like Lil Wayne-covering white boys Framing Hanley. If you took the tense, grisly lyrics of an early Three 6 Mafia record or The Gravediggas debut, removed the tongue that’s planted firmly in their respective cheeks and replaced it with a cultural propensity for verbal skill, you might get close to the spine-tingling imagery K’Naan spits.

Don’t think that The Dusty Foot Philosopher is a total bummer, though. It might not be the first album you’d put on at a party—that would be Biz Markie’s Pickin’ Boogers, natch—but Philosopher is not a dour record by any stretch. “I Was Stabbed by Satan” may be the single most fun song about civil unrest and metaphysical shenanigans in the entire pop pantheon. It’s super-catchy—think “Hey Ya!” folk-pop, but without the bubblegum, the smirk and the schmaltz, just the hooks. “Soobax” is the kind of Afro-electro-dub-step awesomeness that might not fill a dance floor on, say Lower Broad, but that shouldn’t stop the masses from getting down Sunday night at Mercy Lounge.

It still remains to be seen if K’Naan is more than a rookie sensation, just a guy who has waited his whole life to make this one great album and doesn’t have the creative fuel to pull off a second. Early signs are good, like his Web-only version of Lupe Fiasco’s “Kick, Push,” repurposed to tell the tale of onstage harassment by knuckleheaded bouncers. Troubador, the sophomore set from K’Naan, hits stores in January. Looks like three years of globe-trotting have kept his skills sharp and his righteous fire burning.

SOURCE: Nashville Scene