Says Kweli of ‘Rush’, the second track on the album:
“I wanted to call this song ‘Heroin’, but C. Smyth wouldn’t let me. He kept saying something about kids getting the wrong idea. Maybe he’s right. I would never use herion, but doesn’t it sound like a great name for a rock song?“
It’s an intriguing duality that sizeably sums up the ambitious nature of this record: it has all the allure and excitement of the street but with the acuity to transcend it at the same time. That Talib Kweli has the street rushing like this hightly addictive class a drug through his veins – is obvious – but like a reformed addict he has both the power and the knowledge to confront it and move beyond it.
The eldest of two sons born to parents who were both teachers, Brooklyn born, Talib Kweli Greene is the latest in a growing line of ‘conscious’ rappers all pursuing that one inalienable truth in rap and ghetto music.
Considering that the Arabic translation of Talib Kweli means “student of truth,” it’s perhaps only natural that his ethically grounded and socially relevant approach to MCing was destined from birth. But this might lead to the assumption that Kalib’s album Quality, out now on Rawkus and MCA Records is somehow preachy or pretentious – but you couldn’t be more wrong. Taking the social and moral cue from MCs like Lewis Parker, Kalib Kweli has fashioned from the disparate shards of beats and breaks and retro flavoured hip-hop an original urban gospel as cool and effortless as the funky riffs that underscore it. And like any gospel it’s as much about adequate communication as it is about morality.
The new record, Quality is a sign that those early inspired flights of imagination are coming to maturation.
Upbeat, sexy and with the usual parlances of jazz and r ‘n’ b thrown around fluid but penetrating raps it’s an album of ecstatic highs and blessed, bruising blues with some genuinely moving highlights, not least ‘Talk To You (Lil’ Darlin) featuring the angelic Bilal on vocals.
Musically, Kweli enlisted many of today’s leading hip-hop producers to lay Quality’s sonic foundation, including Ayatollah, Dave West, Megahertz, Kanye West, Jay Dee, DJ Quik, the Soulquarians, Da’ Houd and DJ Scratch. Kweli also collaborated with a host of notable guest stars, including his Rawkus label mates Mos Def, Pharoahe Monch and newly-signed hip-hop–soul singer Novel, along with Common, Black Thought, Res and Bilal.
“Quality is about me growing as a man and as an artist and continuing what I’ve been known to always do, which is place quality over quantity,” Kweli explains. “I will never do a record without some sense of responsibility. Even if you don’t agree with what I have to say, even if I’m speaking something that’s not relevant to your life, you’ll still be able to appreciate it.”
And appreciate we do. One of the high points of 2002, surely.