After his debut album--The Dusty Foot Philosopher--took Canada by storm and collected a 2006 Juno Award for Rap Recording of the Year, the pressure was on for K’Naan’s major label follow-up. Troubadour, in a word, delivers. Lyrically, the Somali ex-pat out-rhymes the majority of his native English-speaking counterparts with a mix of violent personal history and charismatic uplift, the occasional melodic chorus, and a voice that’s fairly compared to Eminem’s but more accurately recalls the upper-register nasality of Pharcyde’s Booty Brown. Pop-leaning cuts like “Dreamers” and “15 Minutes Away” duck in and out of instrumentals that borrow from Afrobeat (“Fire in Freetown”), a world/soul sound that hits its apex in the gorgeous “Wavin’ Flag,” and hip-hop’s best use yet of a Bob Marley sample (opener “T.I.A.”). Recorded at Marley’s legendary Tuff Gong studio in Jamaica, the album gets a heavy dose of collaborative energy from such diverse contributors as Mos Def, Chubb Rock, Maroon 5’s Adam Levine (“Bang Bang”), and Metallica’s Kirk Hammett (“If Rap Gets Jealous”). In a year that has already seen an early girth of really strong rap releases that eschew the superficial violence, misogyny, and inanity of most radio fare, Troubadour stands as a front-runner for Hip-Hop Album of the Year. --Jason Kirk
- Format: Explicit Lyrics
- Track Listings : Disc 1
- T.I.A. [Explicit]
- ABC's [Explicit]
- Dreamer [Explicit]
- I Come Prepared [Explicit]
- Bang Bang [Explicit]
- If Rap Gets Jealous [Explicit]
- Wavin' Flag
- Somalia [Explicit]
- America [Explicit]
- Fatima
- Fire In Freetown
- Take A Minute [Explicit]
- 15 Minutes Away
- People Like Me
