Review: Talib Kweli (@TalibKweli) Live at @BBowlLondon

Photo cred­it — Eric T.B Lomotey

Talib Kweli at Brook­lyn Bowl

Sup­port by K’Valentine & Ty.
Show review by Wasif Sayyed [@Wasif.Scion]

A Black Star Pris­oner of Con­scious on a Train of Thought to the Beau­ti­ful Struggle with Grav­itas in Gut­ter Rainbows…or some­thing like that.

Talib Kweli’s web­site bio acknow­ledges his dicho­tomy as a “Pris­oner of Con­scious” (also the name of his 2013 album), and a ver­sat­ile emcee and music artist.

“My music has been asso­ci­ated with those types of causes, with pos­it­iv­ity, spir­itu­al­ity, intel­li­gence and being thought-pro­vok­ing and such…I think some­times people get caught up in that part of me as an artist and don’t neces­sar­ily under­stand the music­al­ity or fully appre­ci­ate the music and the enter­tain­ment value behind what I do.”

Kweli’s early work in duos Black Star  and Reflec­tion Etern­al (with Mos Def and Hi-Tek respect­ively) has been immor­tal­ised into a tapestry of Hip-Hop clas­sics with much nos­tal­gic rev­er­ence for an era where inde­pend­ent Hip-Hop was build­ing its own dam against the waves of com­modot­ized industry rap viol­ence. There was great Hip-Hop mar­keted com­mer­cially for sure, but the core fan-base of  Kweli and oth­er artists such as Com­mon rev­elled in their favour­ite emcees’ ‘con­scious’ out­looks – a phrase itself being a bone of con­ten­tion for oth­ers in the scene and often to the chag­rin of so-called ‘con­scious’ artists them­selves. Talib Kweli him­self had to deal with angry fans who took to the Okay­Player web­site for­um to voice their dis­con­tent about the song ‘Gun Music’ on Talib Kweli’s  debut solo album. The song (with Coco Brovas aka Smiff n Wessun) was ulti­mately a song about pro­tect­ing fam­ily by any means neces­sary  over a bashy dance­hally beat and not a brag­gado­cio gun glor­i­fy­ing anthem as they claimed

There appears a break from his early fan­base.  A num­ber of albums released over the last dec­ade or so  has led to Kweli  acquir­ing a new­er polit­ic­ally and socially act­ive fan base more from his act­iv­ism at ‘Occupy Wall Street’ or in Fer­guson than per­haps the mixed recep­tions of pre­vi­ous records. DJ work or guest appear­ances on songs by artists such as Gucci Mane diver­si­fies his fan­base even more. Espe­cially import­ant for an inde­pend­ent artist since his former label cre­ation Black­smith ended their rela­tion­ship with Warner. Talib Kweli’s roster of guests on his own albums nods to a diverse appre­ci­ation of Hip-Hop with expec­ted names such as Black Thought, Jean Grae and KRS One joined by the likes of Nelly, Raek­won, Under­achiev­ers and UGK .

His latest album, which in itself made a polit­ical state­ment with its title ‘Fuck the Money’ was a free down­load and serves as a per­fect entry point to lat­ter day Talib. Also, what finer way to divorce one-self from the some­what self-fulling ‘pris­on of con­scious’ than to show and prove with a sound­sys­tem, DJ and a mic? Onward to the show…

Badass DJs and mics scorched by Ty and K’valentine. But not many there to bare wit­ness.

 Unfor­tu­nately, when you dis­perse around 200 audi­ence mem­bers around a ven­ue built to hold a 1000 people (and around 600 on the dance­floor), it looks REALLY empty. Per­haps, being the eve of Not­ting Hill Car­ni­val had a det­ri­mental effect on num­bers trekking it out to North Green­wich.

Emcee K’valentine called upon her expert mic skills, charm and relaxed demean­our to enter­tain those sporad­ic spaces where appre­ci­at­ive audi­ences nod­ded to her sin­cere rhymes over trap beats. Not­able moments were a shout out to her home city Chica­go and a rejec­tion of the viol­ence that mars it, and a woman-per­spect­ive flip on Big Sean’s over­com­pens­at­ing hit “I Don’t Fuck With You.”

Ty then pro­ceeded with DJ Big Ted to gath­er a small army of dance guer­ril­las at towards the front of the stage where his energy and immacu­late rhymes with each syl­lable crys­tal clear over soul­ful, funky and hard-hit­ting beats provided enough heat to warm each bare square foot of the Brook­lyn Bowl. Ty is one of the best emcees EVER (not just ‘from the UK’) and his show at Jazz Café in Novemeber will be covered to provide more evid­ence as to why.

Through­out the night, the stand­ard of select­ing by the ensemble of DJs on the Brook­lyn Bowl’s incred­ible sound­sys­tem includ­ing Sarah Har­rison and Ras Kwame was neck break­ing good and enough to con­stantly get a dance on to. Any rammed ven­ue would have done well to have these wheels of steel maes­tros bring their fla­vours.

Talib Kweli Human Mic: We’re Gonna Rock til Noth­ing Else Mat­ters

Almost imme­di­ately, Talib Kweli paid homage to Hip-Hop’s latest deceased luminary Sean Price via a rous­ing per­form­ance of their col­lab­or­a­tion “Paloo­kas.” He pro­ceeded to swiftly give to those in the audi­ence hungry for Reflec­tion Etern­al mater­ial by doing a sing-along to the ubi­quit­ous bass groove of “The Blast” and a hype run through of “Down for the Count” where he gra­ciously invited Ty back on to stage to kill the song togeth­er. Mos Def was missed on “This Means You” and Black Star songs where Talib Kweli clum­sily attemp­ted Yassin Bey’s flows and cadences to ill (not Hip-Hop ill) effect but the sen­ti­ment was appre­ci­ated. This par­tic­u­larly applied to the reg­gae sound­sys­tem homage that pre­ceded “Defin­i­tion.”

A cri­tique of Kweli’s rhym­ing style for his own verses on record has been that he seems to rush his deliv­ery, often cram­ming syl­lables and points into spaces that can’t provide accom­mod­a­tion. Live how­ever, there was so such qualm as Talib Kweli approached his verses with an assured and con­trolled fero­city and vocal clar­ity. Songs that on record seemed bland such as the RZA pro­duced “Rock­et Ships” were brought to life with a pound­ing bass and  mil­it­ar­istic snares. The time to shock out and dance was taken via the sexy groove of Will-I-Am assisted “Hot Thing” and “Say Some­thing (Talk shit now)” brought the ruck­us. Kweli closed his stand­ard set time with one of Hip-Hop’s most pos­it­ive smash hits with ulti­mate feel-good anthem “Get By”. A song that per­haps per­fectly neg­ates the entire exist­ence of Kweli’s album “The Beau­ti­ful Struggle.”

Songs per­formed for the first time from latest album “Fuck the Money” also proved suc­cess­ful high­lights with the thun­der­ous 808s of “Grat­it­ude” and “Nice Things” and the anthem­ic urgency of “Fall Back”. Talib Kweli was happy to return for a fif­teen minutes encore, which included the title track. It is remark­able that some fans to the right of me were rap­ping along to every word in the verses of some of the afore­men­tioned songs – aston­ish­ing con­sid­er­ing the album had only been out a few days.

Talib Kweli was a live les­son in com­pet­ency with enough spread from his diverse dis­co­graphy covered to appease each music­al gen­er­a­tion of his fans with enough left off the menu to make you wish for more: “Oh if only he did Gun Music!”. His crowd inter­ac­tion was some­what for­mu­laic and there seemed to be an emo­tional dis­con­nect between his pro­fes­sional per­form­ance and his emo­tional invest­ment of hype-ness, per­haps owed to the lacklustre turnout. Before tak­ing to stage, I caught site of his glare from the back­stage win­dow scop­ing the vista of an omin­ously empty ven­ue and it seemed his per­form­ance was more an exer­cise unto him­self like his lyr­ic: “We’re gonna rock til noth­ing else mat­ters!”

Down­load “Fuck the Money” as a per­fect re-entry point.

Many Talib Kweli fans had jumped off the train by “A Beau­ti­ful Struggle” and few stayed on for great moments on oth­er albums such as “Eardrum” or the high­lights from the more recent “Grav­itas”, “Pris­oner of Con­scious “ or “Gut­ter Rain­bows”. Talib Kweli states that he star­ted the free Hip-Hop album cul­ture (for bet­ter or for worse… oth­er rap­pers need to eat too!) with his Madlib pro­duced “Lib­er­a­tion” pro­ject but his latest offer­ing is per­haps his best cohes­ive effort. It is a per­fect paint­ing of a man who does take to the streets in solid­ar­ity with the people, rocks heavy trap beats now as well as floaty jazz sampled num­bers and as much as he may want to dis­tance him­self from the sinkers of so-called “con­scious rap” – his being unto itself per­son­i­fies everything beau­ti­ful… and some­times trite with that whole move­ment.  Maybe Kweli’s ulti­mate call­ing and need isn’t just as a rap enter­tainer but a rap enter­tainer who is brave enough to talk about the shit that mat­ters when oth­ers won’t.

This review in a sen­tence? Talib Kweli per­forms a very enter­tain­ing live show and his new free album is a per­fect entry point to where he stands as a per­son and artist today.

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Wasif Sayyed

Author at I Am Hip-Hop Magazine

Wasif Sayyed’s many years as a writer, rap­per, pro­moter, ment­or and hip-hop pro­du­cer have shaped him into an enthu­si­ast­ic and insight­ful cul­tur­al cryp­to­graph­er. He loves read­ing and cook­ing, and can hear the whis­per of an unsheathed liquid sword from 50 paces. Twit­ter @WasifScion

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