The Survivor’s Odyssey: K’naan’s The Dusty Foot Philosopher as a Modern Epic

The essay proposes a literary approach to rap albums as a whole, regarding them as complex narratives that begin with the cover art and end with the last chords/beats of the final song. As a case study, the debut album of Somali-Canadian rapper K’naan, The Dusty Foot Philosopher (2005), is analyzed as a modern-day epic poem. K’naan in fact resorts to many of the classic epic tropes such as the sea voyage, the exile, the battle with adversaries, the mystical qualities of the heroic figure, etc.—and adapts them to the conventions of hip-hop culture. Just as the epic poem embodies the core values of the society from which it originates, so it can be argued that The Dusty Foot Philosopher functions as a paradigm of the experiences and challenges of the refugee, one of globalization’s defining figures.