K'NAAN or K-9 ?

What's in a name? Quite a lot if you want to be a mass market personality. Rapper K'Naan's name is witty and with it's explicit Somali ring, distinctive, indicative of what some people are calling the clear emergence of globalized media.


K'Naan - ABC's feat. Chubb Rock

It's been at least a few years since I bought a CD. I just am not that into music, and frankly have never had that kind of disposible income. But accompanied and inspired by a sound savvy 11 year old, we wandered into HMV last week where we ended up picking up a few CDs to bring me up to date, including the very fine Troubadour by Somali hip hop artist K'Naan.

Troubadour reviewed on The Smoking Section, where at least one commentator noticed the similarity of K'Naan to K-9, and another commentator here says he actually used to spell his name K-9 ("back in 2000 or something").

As far as I know, K'Naan has no particular attachment to dogs or even refers to them in his lyrics, but other artists have according to this excellent article by Stanley Coren, opening up a whole new tangent for this blog, dogs in music.

About K'Naan on Wikipedia.

On mySpace.

25 worst rapper names of all time.