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September 29, 2004
did someone "produce out" talib kweli's flow?
i usually don't do music reviews but then again, i also don't "do" anything on braintag but pipe thoughts to bits so whatever, right? plus this isn't as much of a review as it is a way for me to take my mind off of spectropolis presentations for a while.
anyway, i remember getting into this argument with this guy at a rooftop party in union square years ago. he was suggesting that talib kweli was to mos def as phife was to q-tip. although i loved phife in the context of a tribe called quest, i could never get into any solo-phife that i heard it on mixtapes and the occasional bootleg. kweli, i thought, was different. kweli's rhymes were clever. his lyrics had imagination. most importantly, there was a kineticism -- almost stress-like -- just beneath the top layer of his flow that i remember describing at the time as sounding like a man on the verge of revolution. 'dead prez implicit' i called it. (dead prez' album had also just dropped that summer.) for that i never questioned that he would have a record contract outside of black star.
in 2002 kweli drops both reflection eternal (with hi-tek) and quality. i wonder if the kid who argued with me on that rooftop in union square even remembers our conversation. more importantly, both albums stay in heavy rotation through two generations of my ipod.
all that was setup in order to say that i just listened to the beautiful struggle and came away feeling like something was missing. the kineticism was gone. it sounded like the producers he assembled for the album had gone through and sprinkled a layer of barbituates over the entire thing. and here's what was really weird about the album: it made me feel self conscious. Maybe I was wondering if Kweli's well documented concern about his flow had gotten to him. Or to his producers. Or both. (either way, i don't agree with the criticism.)
whatever it was, i know it's not permanent. that energy was still in kweli at the block party the other week. his live show still jumped. i hope his next album will again.
Posted by yatta at September 29, 2004 12:44 AM
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