Back Up Offa Me

Artist: Talib Kweli
Album: The Beautiful Struggle.

For those who don't know, I am extremely passionate about music. I mean even in the late nineties where it was nothing but high-fructose bubble gum pop with "edgy" boy band dance moves, I still found some way to get lost in music. (See Britney Spears: Don't Let Me Be The Last To Know: Oops I Did It Again) Now as a college student who has more than enough time to discover new facets of the music industry, I'm brought back to my all-time favorite genre, Hip-Hop. Not to be confused with Rap. (Don't get me wrong I love Rap) I love Hip-Hop, for in my mind, Hip-Hop=Lyricism.

To be a good lyricist is an art, you bring scenes to life with a mere choice of words and tonal inflection. It is a craft that must be painstakingly cultivated and continually worked on. You must think about what you say before you say it, not only to make it rhyme, but to make it actually mean something. Instead of saying, "Your people are phony/ I'm going to shoot you" Prodigy from Mobb Deep spits "your crew is featherweight/My gunshots'll make you levitate" there is the difference between a well thought out plan from an artist, and some lines put down to make 16 bars from a rapper. Although prodigy is a good lyricist, he's not a real MC. He might rap about things he's seen or heard about, but nothing he's done, and he continually ventures into the dark side of gangster rap with a message that conceals his true brilliance.

So what do you get when you cross lyricism with message? I will tell you, Talib Kweli. The most unstoppable artist in the Hip-Hop game. If you just listen to his flow on an off day you'll fall in love with him. There's no message about black-on-black crime or how many guns he has in his house. He just talks about straight up life in Brooklyn, his message might cross paths with the aforementioned gangster rap, but it is inevitable because both sub-genres deal with life on the mean streets. However, Kweli spins something negative into something uniquely positive without sounding cheesy. His words inspire his listeners to think about what they are actually doing with their lives. His flow also makes you stop and rewind your tape/cd/Mp3/ Whatever new technology you have that I don't have, to go back and actually LISTEN! I mean, sometimes I have to go open up a dictionary after re-listening to The Beautiful Struggle for like the Bajillionth time.

Who ever said you couldn't learn from Hip-Hop?

And this is my little review, just scratching the surface of why I love Talib so much that I would willingly have his children.