K’NAAN with JASON MRAZ and G. LOVE & SPECIAL SAUCE at Molson Amphitheatre (909 Lake Shore West), Saturday (August 15). $20-$44.50. 416-870-8000.
If the Source Awards have taught us anything, it’s this: put a bunch of rappers in the same room and somebody’s going to get assaulted – something Toronto’s K’naan recently found out.
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Last Saturday during the Rock The Bells festival’s New York stop, Joe Budden was broadcasting live video backstage when Raekwon and his entourage entered the room.
The video went offline, and when it came back on, Budden was putting ice on his eye. Apparently, he’d been punched in the face.
It was the climax of Budden’s simmering feud with members of the Wu-Tang Clan.
“The fight broke out right in front of me,” the Somali-Canadian MC recounts over the phone from Philadelphia. “To be honest with you, I didn’t really want to investigate. I had my food there and I was just like, ‘Oh, we’re still doing this?'”
In K’naan’s opinion, the incident reflects hip-hop’s continuing immaturity.
“You’re grown men, you’re artists, not 14-year-olds,” he says. “I couldn’t see Dave Matthews and Jack Johnson fighting backstage.”
Or, for that matter, Dave Matthews and Jason Mraz. Currently on tour with the Mraz, K’naan says these shows are more controlled than Rock The Bells.
“There aren’t 200 strangers backstage every night,” he says.
Not that he’s complaining about touring with the annual hip-hop festival. He got to close the show every night with Nas and Damian Marley, who would invite him up at the end of their set.
Besides releasing his second album, Troubadour in February, K’naan appears on the duo’s upcoming full-length collaboration, Distant Relatives.
While working once again with his friend Damian was a pleasure, being in the lab with Nas was something else. Beyond inspiring a young K’naan to get into hip-hop, Nas’s classic first album, Illmatic, helped him learn English.
K’naan was understandably blown away when Nas paid him the ultimate compliment.
“He explained to me that my music was one of the main inspirations making him feel like he could go on and make more music.
“That was a real trip.”
music@nowtoronto.com
