I knew there was something unique about Talib Kweli when I first saw him in the fall of 2004. He was opening for the Beastie Boys at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. Baseball season was in full swing and out comes this Brooklyn kid with a t-shirt, jeans.... and an Oakland A's cap. Not only did he get the Beet Seeking Missile's attention with his choice of head gear; his high-order vocabulary and quick-segue delivery were absolutely mind-blowing.
What topped it off during his short set, was his impromptu freestyling.
During the great song "Get by," he incorporated an episode from the
previous night's A's game into the song. Like the best rappers, who are
reporters on the mic, Kweli improvised a short rhyme about the incident:
a Texas Rangers pitcher, in a fit of rage and frustration, had thrown a
chair into the stands and injured a fan. It was just a brief moment in
time, but it was also a quick glimpse into this young man's
lightning-quick style.
The next time i saw Kweli, it was two years later at a rock club called
the Boardwalk in Orangevale, a Sacramento suburb known for it's fondness
for late model Camaro's (and about a mile's walk away from the Beet Seeking Missile's home at the time).
It was a Tuesday night, and the turn-out was
low- maybe forty people in the house. Yet the rapper performed as if we
were 40,000. It was epic fun, as he stormed the place with only a
turntable and two back-up singers. He even hosted a white-boy dance-off
onstage(I think there was one black kid in attendance.)
But as I looked around the sparsely attended show, all I could think was: Why don't more music lovers, regardless of where they're from, know about this guy?
Much has developed since that night. Despite relatively low record sales, Kweli's fan base has grown steadily through word-of-mouth buzz. He is hardly what one would consider a rap star, but he prefers it that way. Kweli has built his following in a steady, hard-working fashion.
Touring constantly, he circles the globe playing big and small venues everywhere. Kweli has the rare ability to deftly straddled the fine line between thought provoking lyrics and being an entertaining party emcee. He is atonishingly gifted at both.
That larger success has eluded him, is part of that choice. Jay Z summed it best in his song Moment of Clarity-"If skills sold, truth be told, I'd probably be, lyrically Talib Kweli." Unlike many big box rappers, Kweli has managed to retain his creativity and keep his integrity intact throughout a 15-year career.
His latest, the long-awaited Prisoner of Conscious, may be where his perseverance finally pays off. It's his first release that combines the elements of great production and the feel of his live sound. It's also the first release that marks his complete financial independence as an artist, after disbanding his last record label and reorganizing things so that he has complete artistic and financial control of his music. In many ways, it's a new peak for the artist.
Prisoner of Conscious contains a variety of sounds. The album's biggest two production triumphs are capturing Kweli's live verbal cadence and adding a wide range of guests, who exceed expectations. Kweli keeps the listener engaged with little idiosyncratic commands that are so customary during his live performances. It's a repetitive process where Kweli squeezes these into the smallest spaces of each song and they fit like small puzzle pieces that make the picture clearer as his high-speed vocabulary washes over you in this age of distractions.
Likewise, the artist has utilized guest appearances in the past, but never to this extent. Sometimes that's a recipe for failure, but Kweli gets the best out of each performer. The list is impressive, featuring up and coming artists like Miguel and Kendrick Lamar along well-known names like Buster Rhymes.
"I love music/I'm complete in my devotion," intones Kweli on the autobiographical "Turnt Up," the album's third track. Here, Kweli alludes to the cerebral influence of his mother, an English professor at Medgar Evans College in New York City. His love for music oozes from each track. The next song, "Come here," which features rising star Miguel, is a lyrical sauna. It has a sensual Marvin Gaye fell to it . In a perfect world, you would hear this song drifting smoothly from car speakers all summer long,
Kweli also documents his constant travels around the world on the record. On "Favela Love," Kweli recounts some memorable thoughts on a balcony in Rio de Janeiro with the help of Brazilian singer Seu Jorge. "A feeling of panic engulfin' the whole planet/Yet my words are slow dancin', my language is romantic." Elsewhere, he drops a reference to a show at Sacramento's Ace of Spades on the whirlwind "High Life," a song that has the flavor of Ghanian style hip-life music.
He calls out phony rappers and has fun trading boasts with Busta Rhymes on "Rocket Ships." On the quirky "Upper Echelon" he says "Rap been laughable over the last year or two." However, he says it best on "High Life"-"I'm fishing with dynamite/now I got a freezer full of rappers." Part of the reason this album is so refreshing, is that Kweli doesn't mince words when being critical about the genre that he loves so much-or anything else.
Kweli returns to his biggest strengths-challenging the everyday perceptions that keep many in our country so stuck in the same place. He calls out the whiners that pollute the internet and airwaves with lyrics like "Stop it. With all the soap operas and the soap boxes" and "They're saying that we need a revolution, but their passion is reduced to all-caps on a computer."
All of this is set to a variety of uptempo beats, catchy hooks and notebooks full of thought-provoking metaphors. Chances are this will be his biggest album to date. But no matter what happens, Kweli will make out well, especially now that he has become a completely independent entity.
And don't forget that he sometimes pairs with Mos Def (now Yasmin Bey) in the legendary Black Star. Lesser known, is Idle Warship, an amazing electronica/rock/rap project with longtime collaborator Res.Some nights he just drops in and DJs at clubs to keep his feet to the ground. It's called creativity people. Keep goin' Kweli!
Here is the video of "High Life"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvTNj5--a9o
Or a live version of "Turnt Up"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTnxCmDXBsU
And finally, the GREAT Kweli classic "Get By"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2ou1Yh1IVY
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