Five Minutes With
Talib Kweli
Hip-Hop MC Talib Kweli is widely revered by colleagues and critics for his politically-infused rhymes that often stand apart from the materialistic themes that define the genre’s mainstream. The native Brooklynite’s profile began to rise with the 1998 debut of Black Star, a collaboration with Mos Def that not only reshaped underground hip-hop, but also helped launch Kweli’s solo career. After releasing his critically acclaimed album Train of Thought as part of the duo Reflection Eternal with DJ Hi-Tek, he went solo. In 2002 Kweli released his solo debut Quality, which featured a collaboration with Kanye West, and the popular single “Get By.” With 2004’s Beautiful Struggle, Kweli left his home of Rawkus Records, the label that put out much of the best underground hip-hop of the late 1990s. Despite increasing success and prominence, Talib has continued to forge his own path. His collaboration with Madlib, Liberation, was offered as a free download online, and despite signing with Geffen, Talib has started his own label, Blacksmith Records, which has already signed innovative MC and producer MF Doom. Talib has maintained a commitment to raising issues of importance to progressives in both his lyrics and his community work. He was recently a panelist at Campus Progress’s L.A. screening of Beyond Beats and Rhymes. Here he speaks to Campus Progress about his distaste for being labeled a “conscious” artist, his criticisms of the current state of hip-hop, and his forthcoming album, Ear Drum.
Campus Progress: You’ve stated in the past that you don’t like being called a “conscious rapper.” Why not, and is there an alternative term to distinguish more cerebral and politically-minded rappers like yourself from the mainstream?
Talib Kweli: I don’t care if you do activist work, or just pop-culture. Whatever you do, you wouldn’t want to be pigeon-holed because it would limit what you’re able to do in your career. You want people to recognize you as the artist that you are, that you have no restrictions, that you can go anywhere with it, you know? The music I make reflects the balance within society, where we are overwhelmed with negative images of our people. So I try to put music out there that has positive messages.
And I make conscious music, but I hate to be labeled as that, as a prefix to my name, because people are given to shortcut thinking. If they automatically put me in a box, that makes them think they know what I’m going to come with every time. Even though conscious-rapper is a positive term, I wouldn’t want to just be some conscious-rapper.
You’ve said that BET has never played any of your videos on “106 & Park.” Have BET and mainstream outlets already pigeon-holed you?
Of course, BET – the people running things over there are very limited in what they feel appeals to black youth. They’re like, “The gangster stuff was popular, so anything that deviates from that must be unpopular and must not be worth giving a shot.” As far as mine, the particular song in question was a song I did with Mary J. Blige and Kanye West, called “I Try.” What I was told by my inside person was that it was just “too conscious.” I couldn’t really care less whether BET plays my videos or not. I was more upset for people like Little Brother and De La Soul andany of those that have been told their stuff is too intelligent for BET. And the kids don’t even have a choice.
You are associated with a critique of mainstream rap as too materially obsessed and violent. Wouldn’t this seem like a very middle-class critique of something coming out of the ghetto?
I totally agree. You don’t hear me talking bad about other rappers. I listen to all that stuff. But I’m not from that lifestyle, so I don’t rap about that stuff. I certainly listen to it, I certainly enjoy it. Everyone should rap from their own perspective. The problem is not “too much pimps” and “too much gangsters,” the problem is the lack of balance in representing what rap is out there. For every Nelly record they play on the radio, they should play an Immortal Technique record as well.
You founded the Nkiru Center, an African-American book store and cultural center in Brooklyn. How does the bookstore fit into a larger picture of political awareness?
That bookstore speaks to my job as a man, to be responsible to my community. I am blessed to be an artist, being able to draw more attention to what Mos Def and I did with the bookstore. But there are activists and store-owners and shop-owners that didn’t necessarily get the props that Mos Def and I did for their work in the community. As artists, our work is a lot more visible. A store that I worked at was going down, so we decided to try to rescue it. At the end of the day we did rescue it, we certainly kept it running for a number of years longer than it probably would have been running. And that addresses what you asked, about it being a bougie thing to criticize rappers who just rap from a street perspective. I definitely agree with that, which is why it’s only hip magazines or college campuses where that discussion is being held.
What are you working on these days?
My album, Ear Drum, will be out in April. I actually put an album out, called Liberation, for free on the internet with Madlib. We put it up for a week, but we’re going to play it at the shows. I’m just getting ready to go on tour.
In an era of media takeovers, with mainstream media outlets becoming less and less open to independent acts, how can individuals take action?
Well it’s really easy to just participate inside the music business, inside the system that’s already set up. It’s a little bit more daunting for people to realize that they have the power, that there is no music business without the artist, even though the artist is at the bottom of the totem pole. So you have to take your power back, and just realize how truly powerful you are. With the age of technology now, there’s nothing stopping an artist from just getting his music out. Record companies were able to amass this power because it cost $200 to record in the studio, you record on two-inch reels, and it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to ship records out to record stores and retailers. Everything is big money, so you’re at the mercy of a record company. When you can just record a song at your house and then with the click of a button send it out to 500 people, the record companies cease to exist.
Young people are prone to taking the gangster images of misogyny and violence projected by rap and imitating them, especially if they want to work in the hip-hop industry. How would you try to convince young people that following this style is not a prerequisite for success?
I think its just about being a realist. Music sales are down 40 percent, so to make a statement like, “I only rap about that stuff because that’s what’s selling and I want to sell,” that’s not only a cowardly statement but that’s also an ignorant statement. That’s like the crack dealer who says, “I sell crack because I wanna be rich,” but really, you’re making less than minimum wage and your chances of going to jail or dying are way higher than if you were to just get a job at McDonald’s. It’s the ignorance speaking. They see the images, the fast money, the fast life, and they think that’s something that comes immediately, without realizing that the top 2 percent make all the money whereas everybody else is just scrambling for crumbs.
Also, realize the aim of whatever you’re dealing with. BET is not something that was built for us to celebrate our culture. That was never the intention of BET. Bob Johnson started BET so Bob Johnson could make money for Bob Johnson, and he’s been very clear about that throughout his entire career. So if we want stations where people pay attention to us, we have to create our own. In New York City there’s a radio station called WLIB, which is one of the two black-owned stations, WBLS is the other one. Black people in the community have to support the station, have to pay attention, have to participate in the community.
The first thing progressive people have to do is realize where people really are. It’s like the comment [Dead Prez MC] M1 made about why do rappers have to be the community leaders? They’re just kids who want to rap. The community leaders should come from the academic or the activist community. They shouldn’t expect 50 Cent to all-of-a-sudden be a community leader.
Illustration: August J. Pollak
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