The Conversation: The Revolutionary Beats of Khaled M.

March 9, 2011 -- "You can't take our freedom and take our soul. You are not the one that's in control."

So goes the chorus to Libyan-American recording artist Khaled M.'s new single "Can't Take Our Freedom."

"It's basically just an uplifting song to give hope and motivation to the people inside Libya, and to let them know that we're watching and we're hoping and we're praying for them," Khaled said.

Khaled knows first-hand the brutality Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is capable of inflicting. His father, Fathi, was imprisoned for his role in a student protest against the government and was targeted to be killed, he said.

"I remember the lashes on his back, the scars that he would get, but he escaped before he was supposed to be executed."

Khaled spent the first few years of his life on the run with his father trying to avoid "Gadhafi's goons," before the family ultimately settled down in Lexington, Ky., in a community of political refugees.

Despite the horror stories Khaled has heard recently from people on the ground in Libya, he remains confident that his people will triumph.

"We're hearing that they are going into hospitals and killing doctors, that they are ransacking the blood banks and pouring out the blood so nobody can get donations," Khaled said.

"We've heard they are driving injured protesters into the hospitals and killing them there so it doesn't look like they were killed in the streets. The saddest part is that it's not shocking to us, it's not a surprise.

"People have gotten too close to turn back now and it's not a matter of if Gadhafi will be gone," he said, "it's a matter of when he'll be gone."

Click here to see more "Conversation" videos from ABC World News.