An uplifting voice of hip-hop: a profile of Talib Kweli.

• Author: Chang, Jeff
• Position: Biography

TALIB KWELI HATES BEING CALLED A "CONSCIOUS" RAPPER. But anthems like Black Girl Pain" and "Get By" have established him as one of the most uplifting voices of the hip-hop generation.

He refuses to vote and calls politics "an illusion." But he is a fervent advocate on behalf of political prisoners and a proud supporter of community organizations like the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.

He insists he isn't a role model. But he spends much of his time speaking to inner-city high schoolers and college students.

In a musical genre usually delivered in the first person, the most common word in his music may well be "we."

If the hip-hop generation is a hothouse of contradictions, Kweli is one of its most intriguing blossoms.

His story is typical of many in the hip-hop generation. Born Talib Greene to two professors, he was raised in a Brooklyn household deeply attuned to the civil rights and Black Power movements. But rather than following his parents into political activism, he followed his peers into cultural production.

A gifted writer and rhymer, Kweli joined forces with high school friend Dante "Mos Def" Smith to form the crew Black Star. Released just as commercial rap was consolidating around bling-and-party themes, their acclaimed 1998 album, Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are ... Black Star, heralded a return to the liberation-minded ideals of rap. Two years later, he followed with his first solo album with Hi-Tek, Reflection Eternal: Train of Thought.

His second album, 2002's Quality, offered his biggest hit and most succinct manifesto to date, "Get By." Over a Nina Simone sample hooked up by producer Kanye West, the song starts as a story of a man trying to get his life right and becomes a metaphor for a generation struggling to center itself amidst forces of oppression. The revolution, Kweli was saying, began with one's self.

Kweli rejects labels like "concious" or "political rap" as insidious forms of corporate branding. "Party" or "gangsta rap" is marketed to mass audiences--crucially through black and brown urban audiences first--a process he captures in a single line from "Get By": "We're survivalists turned to consumers." But "conscious rap" is seen as a rap sub-market and is often pushed first to educated, middleclass, multicultural--often white--audiences. Some black audiences then tend to reject such music as "white music." Kweli says, "Once you put a prefix on an MC's name, someone will shut down. As an artist, that's a death trap.

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