So no matter how you take it aljazeera will bring you the news and Current Affairs that matter to. 0. I didnt grow. In the cover of a magazine if i ever had a dream it was more people just overcoming a bear regime a wonder woman see a part of me wasnt sure if you are really some sort of silly pride or thought of how a fearless how did it they told us the true form is the part that i learned not to hold a hope of them apart running never jumped about being in a celebrity a being in our county i was content with my serger just play a mastani understand i came from pain and torture acca never dream about the fame and fortune how was just happy or was it named abortion but now that im here im proud im here only for Standing Ovations theyll get a. Today the stream welcomes hip hop musician k m for an exclusive interview and Live Performance im femi oke a. Tell us about the challenges hes faced with the muslim artists and what inspires his music from your thought through twitter and our live you tube chat. Ok i have is an artist who feels hes us hit with the sounds of middle east and north africa they live in america musician relates tales of struggle while expressing the power of Political Engagement and resistance the son of a libyan prodemocracy activists he was an opponent of then leader Moammar Gadhafi giago bass rapper has campaigned for a host of activists causes he was a headline name among several arab american artists who joined the employer 5 peace saving syrian lines tour in 2017 now k m is preparing to release his most personal and focused work yet to have its good to have you in the street as well as for pleasure thank you for every were always shaped by at parents family but youll story about how you became what inspires you comes directly from your dad even mentioned right at the top of the show you sent us some pictures this is your dads tell us about him and how that influenced where you ended up going up. So. My father you know obviously he was a political prisoner in libya he. Helped form up Position Movement and we grew up in lexington kentucky amongst a community of political dissidents and i just remember my father being very jovial very kind very loving even with my mother they were never too shy i would be affectionate towards one another you know different or maybe a stereotypical north african a middle east a father he was a poet he was a wordsmith he used to make up songs and freestyle around the house about anything about a food i dont like about being in pots and pans a little rhyme a little a little private he told you as a kid. I mean i know and like libyan dialogue go ahead ok make a show i used to not eat food like food and. So he used to be like kind of. A little forward with just saying basically like. All of the bread and leave in the fall of me just like anything that look at that job by their job their job. And full of course being father beans which i dont like him either so i can relate there so i want to share this with you were talking about family this is new to who says his music has a special place in my heart i often listen to it when i need that dose to ease my soul and uplift us especially when thinking of the evils in society 8 years ago i was listening to his song at home and my now late father began dancing with his music delighted by my fathers humor i big began recording the dancing its a memory and a video recording i am glad to have my father in other words even such a powerful song can have light effects which is a powerful quality an artist so thank you to noodle for sharing that but. Take us us into the realm of what this means to have it connected to family because as you mentioned your father was a poet but he was also a leading opposition activist and you spent the 1st few years of your life on the run. As beautiful to me by the way thank you for sharing the. I mean for us family was everything and ironically we were separated from our family we were exiled we had no communication but i grew up with the closest bonds that i think human beings can form with one another because this collective group for awhile my family was bouncing around and they were. Iraq. London and in those days assassinations and stuff were prevalent and they decided collectively to move to United States sic asylum and continue the organization over there so i grew up in a community of people who only have each other you know we struggle together we overcame poverty and deaths and consoled one another so for someone to then go but a lot of blood family around i know that i have way more human connections and the average person. You know to have been there is officially just shy which is your mom and dad and you were at the front of the. Your little brother is behind you you we can actually see the love of the bonds there for somebody who is living in america and there was a moment for you where you actually had a chance to go back home to libya for the very 1st time and meet your family you can see that in a documentary has been released yet but its called sing freedom i want to share just a moment of you eating with your family have a look. Oh well but it has to. Do good. But not. I dont know about it but im sure you know that. Right now. Thats a beautiful moment i dont feel at home. How does that influence how do you know what your music. You know i learned a lot about myself during that trip and this actually that feeling has inspired my current Concert Series its a storytelling series called the long way home and i realized growing up you know 1st libya was always home lexington always has a home a place in my heart but when i go back to visit the people that i grew up with arent there in the moment it feels like a place i spent a lot of time in but if theyre there to feels like home libya when i got there for the 1st time. It moved me and i had emotions that i couldnt articulate it really felt like home but at the same time from being very transparent with myself and honest they know as soon as i step off the plane and im not from that you still stand i think you know what what is it doesnt close this is on all of us anybody in the studio if you go overseas so i started thinking maybe home is only a physical place maybe some mental place that for me my home is my people and thats when im surrounded by people that im vulnerable with that i can be at peace with their understand my struggle and understand my journey so of course libya is a huge slice of that but i feel like i can step in a few different circles and really relate to that home feeling so ok and your home is your people which is a great segue for your next song never been heard before publicly him and his band will now play a new song medlock wrote as he gets settled heres a video comment from. A fan and a fellow a rapper. A guy so the thing about crime hes so deep down to earth i met him one time this event fan and i shook up with him another time at i heart hes such a personable guy and the thing about him is like you dont really feel like youre meeting an artist you feel like youre meeting a person and growing up in a Muslim Community as a brother it also wraps amish just assume hes a great source of inspiration and hearing the story about his father in libya just really keeps you perseverance and always having the thought in your head about why youre going to become better which. Was. He. Was a lovely. Sound. We grew up in gaza. But we praise abbas a strong love for. This community that what. We all enjoyed in the one street sex of the. Circut all so that was like 2 blocks to life forms to a new place. Now with a much more. Subtle never had a lack of love the bringing subtle little. Things called. White america wasnt for the libyan given in time where was it inside like in the baby in my little cabin settling up on the Cabbage Patch my father had escaped the savage jackson. Got the battleaxe came to the country of canada back to the rate of family on the one. I would rather at some point blood but we lived together there were a lot of things and that was to get good grades to get along a little bit. Just. Was. Just going to make that. Next to. Be a journalist was to tell us they did not she said what would happen would like. To write a speech. 3 years later. I want to thank you so much you always talk about school k n can you give us some props them to us welcome to the streams want yeah some blessed always say when we get together avengers assemble is a superstar weve got dan alexis on the vocals weve got ice on the keys welcome amir too bad grace with the phone and trumpet weve got greg the guard on the bass of colossal coleman on the drums its our International SuperstarRonnie Malley switching between the guitar and the road today thank you so much scott we have more for you in just a fake have come back to the task in our community really love that people commenting live on you tube this is rahman who says i. Im so proud theyre saying 5 year but i want to switch over to tweet because theyre getting those into just some praise here mohamed says. Meaningful work goes beyond his artistic lyrics cant take my freedom which is a song that you will hear coming up with a key advocate presentation that spread through the world i remember my friends who arent libyan told me that song made them more aware about the situation in libya so also being a person who spreading awareness there but this last comment i want to bring to you is via instagram because we got so many questions and comments when our community heard that was coming on the show so ill start with this one here from someone who says what does freedom mean to you and im going to take that a little bit further because freedom in the sense of knowing that you werent free to travel for a very long period of time talked about the. Yeah i mean freedom of movement is one of the most basic human rights to you know. Anybody and for me people wonder why i disappeared i saw comment on twitter like oh you know he was making music about libya and he kind of went back to his old life in the states and really i faced a situation where i was on a no fly over the i was facing perpetual harassment detainment and surveillance during that time period i couldnt release any music i couldnt really be social and social media couldnt do anything and you know were part of a Class Action Lawsuit to clear my name and it took about 3 and a half years for that to happen so during that time had to cancel tours i couldnt go overseas a kind of work i could. Make a living and. Of grown very appreciative of being able to do that now currently can you describe because you are used to telling that story about not being on a well known being on the no fly list but can you tell us one of those moments where you were taken off the plane and you interrogated because any of those stories are remarkable and also terrifying sure i mean you know when you say it people just like honest so you couldnt travel when i fly yeah but we didnt think of how dehumanizing and degrading some of it is i mean i think the moment youre talking about was i had quite as at that time which is secondary security selecting status this designation was for was there for anybody deemed a potential threat to National Security youve got to show up early to the airport maybe to print your boarding pass maybe when you get to security you have to see a supervisor they go through your phone if you have a notebook they take pictures at every page you know book. Strenuous security interrogation and then after that when you get to the gate same thing so i passed all of the security measures i was flying from chicago to lexington had a connection in detroit. I made it through all the security get on a plane to detroit a woman came and asked me for my id i gave it to her and then she said im sorry but were going have to ask you to get off the flight mind you to suppose that my destination i was in the middle of nowhere and i said whats going on they couldnt give me a reason to refund anything and just the feeling of getting off the plane all sitting in the front and all of the faces behind me giving me a sheep as a grin like you know we got you sucker even know it was really humiliating and then just to be left stranded and thankfully i know people in michigan but what if i did it you know it just felt really dehumanizing. Even with all of the struggles that youve gone through to put out music and just to live your life as a human being there are people online who are saying along the way youve been helping other people and so i wanted to share some of those tweets this is malik who says k. M. Was the 1st person to put on for me as an artist he took me on tour with him spread my post and i had no buzz and a 1000 percent is a driving factor into why i started and continue to make music today he goes on to say muslim hip hop is interesting nowadays what i appreciate pushit about him is that it wasnt hillard towards islam but it had clever specific references towards the faith and culture around it without separating out those who werent in the community is that how you would describe your music you make of this thing so i think a different dont make Islamic Community im not the equivalent of a gospel artist im a muslim who happens to also be an artist and for me its important not to try to speak on behalf of any group of people whether muslims libya or anything i just exist on a spectrum of a part of the story im not the story and i just try to contribute in that fashion there are so many examples on your Instagram Account of you doing charity your parents is you doing concerts which is to help other people so your activism is a big deal let me just show our audience to speak to here and this is the amplifier peace tour youre obviously feeling its this this drive that you have to help of the people where does that come from i think each of us have a role to play in society were blessed with certain talents. A rude awakening when the revolution 1st happened in libya for example had a lot of friends who were going back home people who had never been there in their life but we were always raised. With the understanding that were returning my father to say lemon that often and then when we return we always that like its going to be a year 2 years 3 years so for me it was really beautiful to see so many people who have never stepped foot in libya my age moved there and you have people helping with logistics helping with aid helping with communication towers and so here i am like oh i need to get over there 2 of them you know and i remember my family even saying my family over there like you know dont bring your butt on here what are you going to do you can be useless you know how to do this stuff stay over there raise awareness organize stuff organize media get people to tell our story share our story with the world and this was really early on before c. N. N. Before anybody had made it in there. So that was kind of a humbling moment for me when i realized you know let me play my position and do the part that i can. Without this scene from someone who says do you think libya was better off under. You didnt lead in libya under gadhafi but if other did it because we couldnt have been killed if we lived there you know i dont live there because my you know my uncles who were assassinated in 1804 did i was named after d whose bodies were found in a freezer in 2001 and couldnt live there fairly and when i say thats a very important question a lot of people ask it but i always say its the wrong question because it creates a revisionist history so if we say for example you have a tyrant a slave master lets say lets say you had a slave master in america who oppress the People Living with them tortured would they be correct in revolting whatever happens if they make that decision whatever happens next does that negate the initial reason so maybe they overthrow the slave master and they can feed themselves and they prosper maybe they turn on each other if i whatever happens next theres a negate the initial thing so anytime we have a. Leader whos a brutal leader if you take. North korea if you take lets say even hitler probably the worst leader i can think of in history in germany if germany had fallen apart after if there was a lot of proxy wars from Different Countries if there were no existing institutions if italy was paying gangs in germany to keep migrants from going and the country fell apart would be look back then and say oh well electricity is on and off and there was good you cant really use that kind of revisionist history at the end of the day a lot of people were nothing really with gadhafi at all before the revolution and some people are mistaken in thinking that he wanted to unite africa the difference he wanted to rule africa which is ego said it is not based on the people who perpetuated a lot of wars in africa and sudan. At the end of the day oppression was just rampant so when you say at least they had safety under gadhafi it was safe in the sense that the hostage situation is safe which is if i take my legal hostage right now shes safe as long as she will say about the movie she does what i do and i want to tell there is a very i want to go to a slightly lighter moment but again inspired by what you post and im wondering if youll superpower might be nice because if you look you know Instagram Account you talk about how you love the x. Men have you a fan of marvel im guessing youve probably got a couple of these figures at home and you love them what is it about the x. Men you cannot get to because i think thats such a great take away message to such a question. I literally learned how to exist as a muslim in america through watching x. Men as a kid and i feel like the x. Men represent a lot of marginalized communities within the x. Men you have a group of people who are new its through no fault of their own and because people dont understand that the general public and they fear them and because they fear them they hate them and oppressive policies are put into power by the government. And as a reaction there are some. Who fight against those oppressive policies also with the violence and theyre covered on t. V. And it gives the existing news a bad name but you have you have these characters who are struggling with who they are why theyre not accepted and youve got you know the struggle of the 2 main character is a professor who thinks we should always be peaceful and we should always fight with love and understand weve got negredo who is going to oppression in his. Reading of the acts and i will always think of them differently and thank you for bringing us superpower us here own the stream so. I will keep cal