Talib Kweli: A Rapper For The Masses
This story was written and reported by The Showbuzz's Caitlin Johnson.
One could call Talib Kweli the Bob Dylan of hip hop — he's an unrelenting conscience, unwilling to drop the subject of social justice and self-appreciation even though the music industry is often clamoring for sex, drugs and violence.
Kweli, the son of New York University professors, grew up in Brooklyn but attended the prestigious Cheshire Academy in Connecticut. His songs are not only sophisticated musically, but also lyrically replete with complex word play and allusions to Beatles songs and Shakespearean plays. As a conscious or positive artist like Common and his old friend and Black Star partner Mos Def, Kweli's message is almost always elevated.
His most recent projects buck the convoluted music industry. He released a free album called "Liberation" online and broke from his former label, Geffen, to form his own called Blacksmith, on which he will release his sixth album, "Ear Drum." He is also appearing in a documentary that examines manhood in hip hop called "Beyond Beats and Rhymes," which will air Feb. 20 on PBS.
"Geffen wasn't doing any work to market or promote me, anything you saw me do from any videos to press to TV to shows was all done on my own — my own money. I was essentially running my own label already," Kweli told The ShowBuzz.
Unlike some other notable hip-hop figures, whose videos are full of scantily clad women gyrating, expensive champagne and money tossed around cavalierly, Kweli, a father of two, says his responsibilities as a human being, not as an artist, compel him to rap about issues that resonate with real people — but don't call him a political rapper.
"I like the term reality rapper — that was the same term gangsta rappers were using when everyone was focused on them," Kweli, 31, said in his thick Brooklyn accent. "I like that term because the rap I make is a lot more realistic than the stuff you hear on the radio. I talk about real life situations that people go through. Political rap — I stay away from that as a name because it's not so much politics that is my focus, politics is something that I don't ignore, but that's not really my focus. The focus is self-esteem, self-love, self-worth and community building. The politics is secondary to that."
For example, his song "Black Girl Pain" off the "Beautiful Struggle" album tells black women not to be ashamed of themselves. "Get By" off the "Quality" album details the underbelly of American society where some people resort to crimes and drugs for survival.
Kweli — a workaholic who says he tours 250 days a year — is all about speaking to "the community," and when he says community, he most certainly means the oppressed, impoverished African-Americans. He has a voice that carries weight and influence and says it's his responsibility, not so much as an artist, but as a human being, to commit himself to the truth, even if it means that perhaps he won't attain the commercial success of some of his biggest fans and admirers, artists like Jay-Z and 50 Cent. But he is OK with that.
"One thing conscious and positive artists have to realize is that when people turn on the FM radio, MTV, they're not doing it for political commentary," he said. "They would turn to CNN for that. They want to see girls shaking their asses, they want to hear something that's voyeuristic — something that will make them forget about their problems.
"So my job as an artist is to be so good at what I do, that you forget that you're learning something, you forget that you're getting something that's good for you, you're just enjoying the music."
And he really is that good. At a recent Kweli show at New York's Nokia Theater, the energy was electric when he performed some of his classics such as "Definition" and "I Try." He performed his own soulful version of the '80s classic "Sweet Dreams" by Annie Lenox's old group the Eurhythmics and the crowd erupted.
He might not be as famous as Snoop Dogg, but Kweli has been around nearly as long and since he and Mos Def released their album Black Star in 1998, he established himself as one of the most talented underground rappers. Each year through his own records, collaborations with artists such as Kanye West and even an endorsement deal with Big Ten college basketball, Kweli's fan base has expanded.
"I've never had overnight success. My success has been completely gradual. The point I'm at in my career now, has really been 10 years in the making," he said. "I have never had a breakout record that all of a sudden people recognize me, that every year more and more people recognize me, and more and more people get into my music."
Since he was a young man, Kweli said he lived "a hip-hop life" and immersed himself in Afro-centric artists like De La Soul and Tribe Called Quest. He and Mos Def — friends since Kweli was 14 — spent hours rapping together in New York's City Washington Square Park.
"This was pre-Giuliani New York," he said, "where you could still go to Washington Square Park and sit down and smoke a joint and watch magicians and musicians and people juggling and people telling jokes and, you know, people would rap. We would form circles and rap all night."
Today, as a rapper who is gaining more and more notoriety, he said that he has remained true to the young boy who fell in love with hip hop decades ago. If he has a lasting impact on hip hop, he said he would hope it would be that he has showed people to remain true to themselves.
"My name really is Talib Kweli — that's really who I am," he said. "I didn't change too much of my personality or come up with a caricature of a separate identity."
In a way, hip hop is doing the same for American culture. Kweli sees hip hop, and all black art for that matter, as America's conscious.
"We're going to Iraq to fight for oil because those natural resources are running out," he said, "and what black art in this country is — our natural resource."