K'NAAN News, K'NAAN Videos, K'NAAN Photos

September 28th, 2012 | 2:00 pm by Mark Graham (@unclegrambo)

Livestream The Global Citizen Festival This Weekend, Featuring Performances By The Black Keys, Foo Fighters And More

Just a quick reminder that VH1 will be livestreaming the Global Citizen Festival, a benefit concert to support the Global Poverty Project, on Saturday, September 29 from 4:30 to 9:00 p.m. ET. Just head over to Globalfest.MTV.com to watch the festival, which will be held in New York City’s Central Park, in its entirety; you won’t want to miss exciting performances from the likes of Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Foo Fighters, The Black Keys, Band of Horses and VH1 You Oughta Know artist K’Naan. If you happen to be home tomorrow afternoon/evening, our friends over at Palladia will also be broadcasting the concert in its entirety in glorious HD, too.

[Photos: Getty Images]

September 20th, 2012 | 4:30 pm by Mark Graham (@unclegrambo)

Neil Young, Foo Fighters, Black Keys And More To Perform At The Global Citizen Festival

UPDATE (9/28/12): Head over to GlobalFest.MTV.com to watch the festivities, beginning on Saturday, September 29 at 4:30 p.m. ET!

VH1 is excited to announce that we’ll be livestreaming the Global Citizen Festival, a benefit concert to support the Global Poverty Project, right here on VH1.com on Saturday, September 29 from 4:30 to 9:00 p.m. ET. The festival, which will be held in New York City’s Central Park and feature performances from the likes of Neil Young, Foo Fighters, Black Keys, Band of Horses and VH1 You Oughta Know artist K’Naan. Our friends over at Palladia will also be broadcasting the concert in its entirety in glorious HD. We’ll have more details on this exciting project coming soon, but for now, here’s a press release about the event that just crossed the wires.

GLOBAL CITIZEN FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL PARK ON SEPTEMBER 29TH TO MAKE HISTORY AS THE LARGEST SYNDICATED MUSIC CHARITY WEBCAST AND BROADCAST

Performances By Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Foo Fighters, The Black Keys, Band of Horses and K’Naan; Hosted by Katie Couric, Jeffrey Sachs, Jack Dorsey, Olivia Wilde, Minka Kelly, Sophia Bush, Selena Gomez, Katharine McPhee

Historic Event & Ongoing Online Campaign Aims to End Extreme Poverty

New York City, NY, September 20, 2012 – The Global Poverty Project is proud to announce that their upcoming Global Citizen Festival, produced by AEG Network LIVE and delivered by AEG Digital Media, will be live streamed and broadcast by an impressive list of media partners. The simultaneous distribution of this historic event allows the world to “attend” the festival, which will bring together leading non-profit organizations, musicians and notables in Central Park on September 29, 2012 as part of a mass movement to end extreme poverty.

June 4th, 2012 | 5:49 pm by Monse Barrera

May Playlist: Listen To Songs Featured On Your Fave VH1 Shows

At VH1, countless hours are spent determining what music best complements our shows. In fact, the team responsible for this task, known as the Creative Music Integration (CMI) group, listens to thousands of songs each month in an attempt to figure out how best to utilize musical cues to reinforce the emotion and drama on shows like Single Ladies and Basketball Wives. We thought it would be a cool idea to give you an inside glimpse into this world.

To this end, we’ve put together a list of all the songs featured on our network in May — from artists like Santigold, Estelle, Tank, Neon Hitch and up-and-comer Elle King. Additionally, we’ve included commentary from CMI team members as to why they selected songs for particular scenes as well as a Spotify playlist for you to sample. Enjoy, and stay tuned for our June playlist!

VH1 SHOW PLAYLIST: MAY 2012

May 3rd, 2012 | 6:15 pm by Mark Graham and Monse Barrera (@unclegrambo)

Playlist: Listen To All Of The Songs Featured On Your Favorite VH1 Shows During The Month Of April

For each and every show that airs on VH1, a team of music supervisors here at the network have spent countless hours determining exactly what pieces of music best complement the footage that we have shot. This team—the CMI (Creative Music Integration) group—listen to thousands of songs each month in an attempt to figure out how best to utilize musical cues to reinforce the emotion and drama on shows like Mob Wives and Basketball Wives, so we thought it would be a cool idea to give you an inside glimpse into their world.

Each month, we’ll put together a list of all the songs that have been featured on the programs and promos that you see on VH1, which will be accompanied by two things: Specific commentary from the music supervisor as to why they selected a particular song for a particular scene in a show, as well as a Spotify playlist for you to sample these songs. Without further ado, here are all the songs that we featured on VH1 during the month of April!

VH1 SHOWS PLAYLIST: APRIL 2012
(Listen to the playlist on Spotify)

PROMO
B.o.B “So Good” in Single Ladies Promo

April 17th, 2012 | 12:00 pm by Bené Viera

Music Seen: “Take A Minute” To Get To Know K’naan

If you didn’t already know, this is K’naan! We caught up with our You Oughta Know artist of the month at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC’s Greenwich Village earlier this month, where he performed a sultry set featuring his songs “Take a Minute” (which you can watch below), “Bulletproof Pride” and “Is Anybody Out There?” (which you can watch here). Hearing his passionate vocals over live acoustics was musical heaven, and seeing him perform in such an intimate setting really accentuated both the power and poetical flow of his lyrics.

Before, during and after his performance, K’naan proved to be a super friendly and very chill guy. Our ace photographer Colin Gray got to spend some extra time with him for the latest installment of our on-going Music Seen series. Enjoy!

KNaan

April 2nd, 2012 | 5:30 pm by Mark Graham (@unclegrambo)

K’Naan Is VH1′s April You Oughta Know Artist

As we bid adieu to our talented March You Oughta Know artist Graffiti6, it’s time to give a great big welcome to K’Naan, the latest member of the YOK Family!

K’Naan is a 34 year-old, Somalian-born hip hop artist, one that currently calls Canada home. He was raised in the war-torn town of Mogadishu, but at the age of 13, he and his family were able to make their way to North America, first arriving in New York City before settling down in Toronto. K’Naan released a few albums in the latter half of the Aughts to critical acclaim, but it wasn’t until his anthemic 2009 song “Wavin’ Flag” (which was produced by a then-unknown Bruno Mars) was selected to appear in a Coca-Cola advertisement in 2010 that he really began getting noticed. This just wasn’t any ordinary commercial, either; Coca-Cola selected his song to be the company’s promotional anthem for the 2010 World Cup, which exposed K’Naan’s particularly soulful blend of hip hop to an international audience that numbered in the hundreds of millions.

Understanding that he had a golden opportunity to take his career to the next level, K’Naan took the next few years to work on his follow-up to Troubador, the 2009 album that “Wavin’ Flag” first appeared on. In January, he released his 5-song More Beautiful Than Silence EP, which is a pre-cursor to May 1 release of his full-length God, Country Or The Girl. His EP contains the single “Is Anybody Out There?”, which is steadily climbing the Billboard charts, thanks in no small part to its hook being sung by his fellow Canadian, Nelly Furtado. He performed the single sans Furtado a few weeks ago at New York City’s Le Poisson Rouge as part of his You Oughta Know Live set, a video that we have for you above. (In the video above, aMina accompanies K’Naan in place of Furtado.)

March 16th, 2009 | 11:50 am by Jim Macnie

K’Naan: Somali MC Rocks Politics & Fun

K?naan?s full name is Keinan Warsame, and the first part of that moniker means ?traveler.? Well chosen, because the Mogadishu-born MC has bounced around a bit. He grew up in Somalia, moved to Harlem, spread his artistic wings in Toronto, and is now on the road supporting his very impressive second disc, Troubador.

He honed his flow as a kid, echoing the rap cassettes his dad would send across the Atlantic from NYC. It has paid off. On the new CD?s ?ABCs? he manages boast about his skills, stump for the education of kids, and give Chubb Rock plenty of elbow room. Troubador has silly rhymes, thoughtful rhymes, political rhymes, and funky rhymes. It gets lots of jobs done.

We asked K?naan, VH1 Soul’s latest You Oughta Know artist, a few off-the-cuff questions right after he and his group wailed through a performance on Jimmy Kimmel?s show in late February.

Name a great memory from childhood.
?There are a lot of them, but there was this one rainy day where about 50 kids from our neighborhood in Somalia went to a lake that used to fill up during rainstorms. It was beautiful to swim in. Kids from other neighborhoods were scared of kids from our neighborhood. When we reached the lake, the other kids cleared. We had the whole thing to ourselves. You could jump from little cliffs. We stayed there ?til the evening.?

What are you, a morning or night person?
?Night. I like the silence, and I like knowing that everyone else is asleep ? like I?ve got one up on everyone. I stay up late, and usually go to bed when I?m exhausted from a show or some studio work – I collapse. I do my reading elsewhere; in bed, it?s like ?let?s just sleep.??