Anytime you hear an R&B song, a pop song, you’re hearing autotune, but it’s just not employed in a way where you can recognize it. And they lean on the autotune and they use it as an actual instrument. It’s just you have younger, new hip-hop artists who have taken it to a new level. Auto tune is a studio tool that is used all the time. And with all due respect to rappers who employ this, but it’s refreshing to hear an album without auto tuned vocals all over it. Lush, jazzy instrumentation, expansive bass, thought-provoking lyrical content, dope features. Well this album, Radio Silence, is full of the stuff that made me fall in love with hip-hop in the first place. And not too many artists are able to pull that off. You know, on my records I have had Nora Jones and Justin Timberlake, Peter Rock and KRS-One on them. ![]() But before I could be seen as the connector between the past and the present, I was the connector between what was considered commercial and underground. Talib: Yeah, and to take that even further, I’ve referred to myself as the connector in several interviews. Someone who connects the old hip-hop guard, so to speak, with the wave of new talent. That’s interesting because I’ve always seen you as a bridge between those two things. But he did do one dedicated to Prince after his passing, yeah. Stevie Wonder parties and Michael Jackson parties, he’s integral part of Spike Lee’s block parties all day. And DJ Spinna, who’s famous for his Prince vs. When I was 14, 15 years old, I was going to Spike Lee’s block parties. Talib: Spike Lee does block parties every year. Spike Lee did a block party right on the heels of Prince’s passing as well, didn’t he? And now when you look at (the new Netflix show) She’s Gotta Have It, I’m mentioned in that. When you saw me in the video with Spike, that was the first time I had ever met him, even though he was one of my biggest influences. It was also the same day as Spike Lee doing his annual block party.Īnd I grew up on Spike Lee, but I had never met him. So a lot of that video was all of us hanging around. And that was right at the end of his Radio City run. A lot of people want to be around Dave Chapelle because he’s such a lightning rod of energy and positivity. A lot of the people who I respect and have been around in this business and a lot of people who are newer in the business, like Anderson Paak, as well as old friends of mine, like Q-Tip, Mos Def, and Dave Chapelle, were all in New York that weekend. The weekend that that video was filmed over was a special weekend. We don’t take the time to truly interact with each other. We’re doing Christmas shopping on Amazon, we’re traveling around in Uber. A lot of people’s interactions in the digital age is solely on social media. What does it mean to you to ‘happen in real life’? You can look to the title of this article, or you can read the interview below.įrom Fall/Winter Vandala Magazine 2017 ( Free HERE)ĭave Chapelle speaks some serious truth at the end of the ‘Traveling Light’ video. And if you are into hip-hop and haven’t heard of this man, this is the eternal conundrum that is Talib Kweli’s musical career: how does commercial success continually seem to evade one of the best artists in the game? There are few rappers around today with the lyrical depth and technical rapping ability that Talib possesses. On Radio Silence, Kweli’s eighth solo album and (fifteenth, I think?) album overall, you will find the same deep thinker, the same jazz-influenced, and a socially conscious rapper that you did in 1998. ![]() And Black Star shows do pop up every now and again as part of festivals or in locals around southern California.īut while Black Star may well be a one and done deal, as far as their recorded output is concerned, Talib Kweli has remained extremely prolific ever since Black Star dropped nineteen years ago. ![]() In part a reaction to, perhaps even a rebuttal, of the gangster rap era and the glorification of that lifestyle, Black Star was a thinking man’s hip-hop album, with socially conscious themes from two of the genres deepest thinkers and most skilled mic-men.īlack Star is the only album Bey and Kweli have released under that name, but both have gone on to highly celebrated solo careers. When Mos Def (now Yasiin Bey) and Talib Kweli’s Black Star dropped back in 1998, it changed a lot of things for a lot of people. It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back. When future generations looks back on the story of hip-hop music, there will be a handful of albums which they will looks to as the benchmarks for the level of craft, consciousness and influence the genre has had on the world.
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