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K’naan celebrated the release of his sophomore album Troubadour with a headlining show at the Mod Club on Tuesday night. And, uh… it was awesome.

Photos and highlights after the jump!

The room was packed and over-capacity, the crowd anxious to hear more songs from the new album. After months of being teased with tracks like “ABCs” and “Wavin’ Flag”, it was pretty obvious that what K’naan was about to drop would be something special. And I think he was feeling the hometown energy too, cause his onstage presence was fierce. Smiling, dancing, bantering; sharing stories behind the new tracks and pointing out that his family was in the audience. “My mom’s so cute,” he grinned.

The setlist didn’t stray far from Troubadour, although of course he rocked “Soobax” from The Dusty Foot Philosopher and surprisingly, a freestyle version of Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida”. Technical problems reared their ugly head but K’naan rolled with it, busting stripped-down versions of songs like “Somalia” and “Take A Minute” – even throwing in a spoken word verse or two from “Dreamer”. If he was upset about the sound gaffes (“I might have to get violent in a minute”), his smile hid it well. And after finishing the set with “Wavin’ Flag”, the crowd roared in appreciation, asking for more. His manager Sol (host of 4Real) stepped up to the mic, assuming a very business-like pose. “Do you really want more K’naan?!” he taunted. Doy. I think K’naan wanted more too, cause he performed at least 5 more tracks including “T.I.A” and finishing with the gorgeous “Fatima”.

Basically what I’m trying to say is a) this guy puts on a mean show; and b) the album is a stunner. For serious. Check it out. And for now, here are some photos from the show!

K'Naan by Wendy Heisler

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Tags: concerts, k'naan, mod club

Posted on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 at 4:22 pm by Wendy and is filed under Concerts & Events.

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