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Do The Damn Thang
You knew the partnerships with Mos Def and DJ Hi-Tek wouldn’t last. That’s right, Talib Kweli has gone solo on that ass. But can the intellectual MC overcome label problems to bring his message to the world?
XXL, June 2002
By his senior year at the tiny Connecticut boarding school, Cheshire Academy, Talib Kweli Green, had become a campus role model. One of the few Black students there, he worked on the yearbook committee, headed the drama society, made the honor roll, supervised younger students in the dorms, and led tours for prospective parents.
“I realized that I was a commodity for them,” he says. “Something that they could parade around. Whenever they’d bring other people, they were like, ‘Look! Look what we have. He’s smart. He don’t even play basketball.”
The fact that the administration held him in such high regard made him feel comfortable enough to roam the campus, eyes ablaze, peddling ganja right under their noses. “I was a teenager, so I think I’m looking cool. But I’m walking around looking high.” Finally, is his senior year he had what he now believes was “a nervous breakdown,” after getting into a fight with both his parents and a girlfriend. He trashed his room, lay down on his bed, and refused to go to class.
“They sent all kinds of teachers,” he says. “Guidance counselors knocking on my door. I just told all of them to go away, go away. All day long.”
When he emerged for dinner he was called down to headmaster’s office. “He said, ‘We know everything that you’ve been doing,” he says. “‘We know you’ve been getting high, we know you’ve been selling weed. You got to calm that shit down because it looks really bad.’ He was like, ‘We’re going to put you on proctor probation for a month,’ which basically meant that I had to get up for breakfast instead of sleeping in. But that was only punishment I got.”
Seated in a booth beneath the high ceilings of Manhattan’s Time Café, Talib Kweli has traded the insular, childish world of boarding school for the insular, childish world of hip-hop. Gone are the dreads, nose ring, and school uniform, replaced by the standard hip-hop uniform—provided today by the good folks at Ecko Unlimited, and electronically accessorized by the good folks at Motorola. Still, while he’s on the verge of releasing his first true solo album, Kwelity, the essential life lesson he took from Cheshire Academy remains etched in his memory. “I realized I could pimp the system,” he says. “Like, Wow, this is a situation where they need me. I have to place myself in situations where I become so valuable to people that their laws don’t matter. That’s how I have to live my life.”
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In an industry that prizes conformity, Talib Kweli, has consistently made records on his own terms, a middle-class kid bringing the struggles of everyday black people to life. His first two albums—Black Star’s Talib Kweli and Mos Def are Black Star and Reflection Eternal’s Train Of Thought—were both commercial and critical successes. In reference to Talib Kweli and Mos Def are Black Star, The Boston Phoenix’s Michael Endelman gushed, “The spirit of [A Tribe Called] Quest lives on in one of hip-hop\'s most impressive debuts of the year.” In Reflection Eternal’s music, Kweli’s words meld with Hi-Tek’s beats to create cogent aural essays on the criminal justice system (“The Human Element”), black women (“For Women”) and hip-hop (“The Manifesto”). Even Russell Simmons took notice, making Kweli the conscious face of last summer’s hip-hop summit. With the release of Kwelity, the self-proclaimed “underdog” could finally be in a position to garner a gold record.
While Kweli wants to make his own rules, as a major label artist, he faces issues beyond his control. His label, Rawkus Records, formerly funded by Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp, has fallen on hard times. The company mysteriously shut down in December without informing employees. Having lost their distribution deal with Priority (which was swallowed up by EMI early this year) they secured a tentative deal with MCA and reopened—but with only half their previous staff. The Rawkus offices at 676 Broadway, once a gathering place for New York’s underground, are now home to three full-time security men, one stationed at the building’s entrance and two more upstairs. The atmosphere is tense and chaotic.
So while Kweli has finished his album, Rawkus can only commit to an August release date. Okayplayer.com, the website that Kweli shares with The Roots, Common and D’Angelo, still features the promotional mini-site for Train Of Thought. “We haven’t begun production [on the Kwelity website],” says Dan Petruzzi, Okayplayer’s general manager. “We’re just kind of waiting, just like Talib’s waiting. We’re not about to start talking to Rawkus about money considering their financial situation.”
“The thing that’s still frustrating is that [the distribution deal with] MCA is not solidified,” Kweli explains. “If a label truly wants to make money, why would you allow a situation to happen, MCA or Rawkus, where you have artists with projects sitting on the shelf for three or four months. No money is being put into advertising, finishing albums or mixing. Because of legal red tape you can’t put any money into anything. How do you expect your artist to even begin to compete with people like Ruff Ryders and Jay-Z—who are making songs in the studio and giving them to radio stations the next day, who are recording ten songs and having the album out in a month?”
If Kweli’s personal situation with Rawkus isn’t maddening enough, the surrounding issues are similarly convoluted. Kweli is signed as a solo artist to Rawkus, which is distributed through MCA, and signed to MCA as one-half of Black Star, through Mos Def’s Good Tree Media. Kweli and Mos are halfway through a second Black Star album, but they’re having trouble securing the budget from MCA to finish the project. “It’s so complicated and frustrating that it’s even hard to talk about,” says Kweli, completely exasperated. “I still got beats on hold since Christmas.”
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Times were far simpler when Kweli’s rap life began. As a freshman at New York University, his biggest concern was figuring out how to get his roommate, John Forte, out of the dorm room so he could get a little action. “He went to class for about a week,” Kweli says of the future Refugee All-Star. Kweli, the son of two professors, one of whom was teaching at NYU at the time, didn’t last much longer. Big time party promoters Stress Entertainment were managing Forte’s fledgeling career. “We were at the parties every night,” Kweli says. “I started meeting a lot of rappers. I realized they were just regular people. I thought, Wait, I could do this. What am I doing in school?”
By the end of his freshman year, sick of the “crybabies” in his experimental drama program, he decided that college wasn’t for him. He took a job at Nkiru books in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. He and Forte worked on music that they showcased at the Lyricist Lounge. He struggled to find his niche, working with various producers. Through Forte, who had been hired as Rawkus’ first A&R, Kweli got down with the label. (“He’s gotten himself in a whole heap of shit,” he says of his former roommate, who is currently in prison awaiting trial on Federal drug charges. “Whatever happens, he will come out of this a stronger person.”)
It wasn’t until he traveled to Cincinnati, though, to visit an NYU friend, that Kweli found someone he clicked with musically. “I just though his beats were incredible,” Kweli says about his meeting with DJ Hi-Tek. “I just kept beating him in the head like, You’re sound, that’s the sound I want.”
That’s the sound he got, as Hi-Tek produced the majorityCK of the Black Star album, teamed with Kweli to form Reflection Eternal, and contributed beats for #TK songs to Kwelity. Unfortunately, though, Hi-Tek hasn’t been returning Kweli’s calls lately.
“I honestly don’t know why I haven’t heard from him,” says Kweli. “I still got love for him. It’s just that he’s on a whole different page than I am. I kind of saw that coming the whole time we were making music together. He always struck me as the type of person that when it’s time to move on its to time to move on.”
According to Tek’s manager, Zach Katz, Reflection Eternal will reunite in the future. Right now, though, Tek is busy working on a Jonell album for Def Jam and a second solo record (to be released on MCA) featuring big name rap stars artists like Snoop and Nas.
“You know what I honestly think it is,” Kweli says. “There’s a certain stigma attached to being involved with an artist like myself, or an artist like Mos Def or Common, that wasn’t necessarily all of what Hi-Tek was. I don’t think that people really understood what type of person he was. He’s not like this vegetarian dude, or someone who would go to open mics or poetry readings.”
The Hi-Tek situation, which seems to genuinely perplex Kweli, is forcing him to look out for himself. “Mos is working on his Black Jack Johnson Project,” he says. “Hi-Tek is working on his project, so I made a decision that I would have to take care of myself musically. If I was just waiting around for Reflection Eternal and Black Star, I’d stagnate.”
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Despite his label limbo, Kweli is working hard to promote his album. Jumping out of a cab outside the large brick building that houses Hot 97, he walks through traffic with his eyes fixed on his notepad, hurriedly scrawling edits to the 16-bar verse he wrote on the ride over.
He has come to record promo spots for his new album, and heads directly into the station’s recording studio. Electing to rhyme over the Kanye West-produced instrumental for his new song “Good To You,” Kweli obsessively punches in and out, repeatedly tweaking his words to big up various Hot 97 personalities. As Kweli runs through his verse, Hot 97 engineer Chris Mercado, politely expresses concern. “That’s good,” he says, referring to the line “competition is fierce.” “But from a radio standpoint that’s not great.”
“What if I changed it to ‘competition ain’t none?’” Kweli asks.
“Perfect,” Mercado says.
Kweli’s performance at Hot 97, makes it obvious that he knows which rules to test. He’s willing to make the concessions necessary for songs like “The Proud,” a thoughtful examination of black patriotism in light of September 11, to have a chance at some airplay.
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Talib Kweli seems most comfortable the following day at Nkiru Books. Two years ago he and Mos Def rescued the store from bankruptcy. As Park Slope gentrified, they lost their lease, turned the store into a non-profit and moved it to the adjascent, working-class neighborhood, Prospect Heights. Clad in a fisherman hat and blue football jersey, he doesn’t look much older than the 15 or so nattily dressed teens who sit surrounding him, listening intently. They’re from Harlem’s Rice High School and he’s conducting a forum on HIV prevention. Employees of Lifebeat, a music industry group addressing the AIDS epidemic, are taping the discussion. Kweli’s segment will be shown on Madison Square Garden’s video screens during UrbanAid2, an April 9 concert to promote AIDS awareness in the inner-city featuring Jay-Z, Alicia Keys, and The Roots.
“There is a warped perspective of manhood,” he says, measuring his words carefully. “How can we change this?”
After the forum is over, the teens are allowed to question Kweli. “Would you ever do hardcore rap?” one asks.
“I never busted guns so I wouldn’t be any good at it,” he says.
On his way out, Robert Innis, a confident 16-year-old, admits that he’s never really been a Talib Kweli fan. “I\'ve never listened to him,” says Innis. “I listen to Jay-Z on the way to school.” But then he adds something rather telling: “The forum should have been televised on something that all kids watch, like MTV.”
Subtly, Talib Kweli is pimping the system to this day. By offering a valuable alternative to mainstream rap acts (and yes, by playing the role model and compromising when necessary), he’s creating a situation for himself where the old laws of mass appeal, the rules of art versus commerce, matter less and less. “The odds are definitely stacked against artists like myself,” he says. “But since when are we afraid of a challenge?”
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