K'Naan's New EP ''More Beautiful Than Silence''

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a full three years since Somali-Canadian rapper Keinan Abdi Warsame – that’s K’Naan to jus’ us folks – released his third studio album The Troubadour and scored a surprise international sleeper hit in the song “Wavin’ Flag”. His autobiographical anthem of growing up in wartorn Mogadishu has had several lives in the last three years. Originally a Top 10 hit in Canada, the song got a snazzy new remix in late 2009 featuring a new Spanish language verse sung by Spanish pop hunk David Bisbal for the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. For the Euro dance clubs, David Guetta and will.i.am took a shot at the song as well, and then, following the earthquake in Haiti, the song was turned into a all-star Canadian “We Are the World”-type charity single.

It’s all enough to make a guy wonder how an artist can possibly follow up a hit song that, almost in affirmation its own chorus – “and then it goes back, and then it goes back, and then it goes back” – never really seems to go away. Even just a couple months ago, the song got the a capella treatment on NBC’s The Sing Off. And it’s not as if K’Naan didn’t try. He released several more singles from The Troubadour following “Wavin’ Flag” – songs like “Take a Minute” which also hit the Canadian Top 20 but still got swallowed up in its predecessor’s shadow.

K’Naan’s back with a new 5-song EP called More Beautiful Than Silence. From that EP comes this collaboration with Nelly Furtado called “Is Anybody Out There?” A lyrics video for the song has been posted to the youtubes. Play it once and you’ll never get it out of your head: