Talib Kweli - "Stay Around" (mp3)
There's a moment halfway through Talib Kweli's new album that's an unlikely combination of unintentionally funny and bitingly self-aware. The Pete Rock-produced "Stay Around" begins with Kweli voicing all the various nitpicky criticisms he hears about his music -- "you should rap on beat/ you should rap more street/ and never ever get your mack on, please" -- in an unsubtly mocking voice. He's kinda justified, too, I can't think of any established MC who gets dismissed quite as much as him, for being too this or too that, or just not as good as Mos Def, or whatever. Much in the same way that my favorite track on Right About Now was the title track's dissatisfied overview of Kweli's various career setbacks, I respect the point of "Stay Around" in spite of, and partly because of, the crabby way he delivers it.
I've always liked Kweli and rooted for him, too, admittedly enjoying the way Mos has fallen off the hip hop map without even being a good enough actor to justify his focus on a Hollywood career (amazing that Kanye can lament that he wishes Lauryn Hill's "heart was still in rhyming" on the same album where he enables Mos Def's ambitions as a mediocre R&B singer), while Kweli has broadened his fanbase and dropped albums more consistently, even surprisingly beating Swizz Beatz on the charts. Still, Eardrum is kind of a bland album, and only a slight recovery from the major missteps of Beautiful Struggle. Production-wise it's good but not great, and Kweli is mostly on point but really embarrasses himself a few times, either with with confused 'conscious' lyrics -- the part on "Give Em Hell" where he says "never question the fact that Jesus was Jewish not a Christian" is kind like, uhh, dude, um, you're not processing the idea that Christ wasn't a Christian? -- or with horrible choices in pop culture references: the Larry the Cable Guy impression he does on "Soon The New Day" is probably the single most cringe-inducing line I've heard all year, worse than a hundred of Common's "astronaut lady" lines.
And while I was kinda lukewarm on Eardrum to begin with, the 3 tracks produced by Madlib motivated me to finally check out Liberation, the mixtape/mini-album that Madlib and Kweli released for free all over the internet in January. Liberation is great partly because Kweli finds the kind of synergy with a producer that he hasn't had since the Reflection Eternal album (and based on Hi-Tek's one piss poor contribution to Eardrum, "More Or Less," he and Kweli might not have that chemistry anymore anyway). I always kind of slept on Madlib and assumed I wouldn't like his tracks, partly because of my general bias against indie rap, but mainly because I really hated that Quasimoto album back in the day when my roommate had it. But I'm glad I overcame that bad first impression, because at this point Liberation has pretty much usurped Eardrum's spot on my favorite albums of the year list.
There's a moment halfway through Talib Kweli's new album that's an unlikely combination of unintentionally funny and bitingly self-aware. The Pete Rock-produced "Stay Around" begins with Kweli voicing all the various nitpicky criticisms he hears about his music -- "you should rap on beat/ you should rap more street/ and never ever get your mack on, please" -- in an unsubtly mocking voice. He's kinda justified, too, I can't think of any established MC who gets dismissed quite as much as him, for being too this or too that, or just not as good as Mos Def, or whatever. Much in the same way that my favorite track on Right About Now was the title track's dissatisfied overview of Kweli's various career setbacks, I respect the point of "Stay Around" in spite of, and partly because of, the crabby way he delivers it.
I've always liked Kweli and rooted for him, too, admittedly enjoying the way Mos has fallen off the hip hop map without even being a good enough actor to justify his focus on a Hollywood career (amazing that Kanye can lament that he wishes Lauryn Hill's "heart was still in rhyming" on the same album where he enables Mos Def's ambitions as a mediocre R&B singer), while Kweli has broadened his fanbase and dropped albums more consistently, even surprisingly beating Swizz Beatz on the charts. Still, Eardrum is kind of a bland album, and only a slight recovery from the major missteps of Beautiful Struggle. Production-wise it's good but not great, and Kweli is mostly on point but really embarrasses himself a few times, either with with confused 'conscious' lyrics -- the part on "Give Em Hell" where he says "never question the fact that Jesus was Jewish not a Christian" is kind like, uhh, dude, um, you're not processing the idea that Christ wasn't a Christian? -- or with horrible choices in pop culture references: the Larry the Cable Guy impression he does on "Soon The New Day" is probably the single most cringe-inducing line I've heard all year, worse than a hundred of Common's "astronaut lady" lines.
And while I was kinda lukewarm on Eardrum to begin with, the 3 tracks produced by Madlib motivated me to finally check out Liberation, the mixtape/mini-album that Madlib and Kweli released for free all over the internet in January. Liberation is great partly because Kweli finds the kind of synergy with a producer that he hasn't had since the Reflection Eternal album (and based on Hi-Tek's one piss poor contribution to Eardrum, "More Or Less," he and Kweli might not have that chemistry anymore anyway). I always kind of slept on Madlib and assumed I wouldn't like his tracks, partly because of my general bias against indie rap, but mainly because I really hated that Quasimoto album back in the day when my roommate had it. But I'm glad I overcame that bad first impression, because at this point Liberation has pretty much usurped Eardrum's spot on my favorite albums of the year list.
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on Tuesday, October 02, 2007 at 4:38 PM.
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Anonymous : 1:10 PM