 Grandmaster Melle Mel | Kwamé  |
I go to the club now and I may have some champagne as a grown-ass man, but when I was first coming into the game that wasn’t what I was thinking about or rapping about.
Talib Kweli has been accused of being an artist without commercial appeal. But with three solo albums to his name—not to mention Reflection Eternal, his collaborative effort with producer Hi-Tek and, perhaps his most beloved collaboration, the super-duo known as Black Star with Mos Def—he has proved a viable, at times vital MC during a long career. Reflection Eternal reunites this year for their second album, Revolutions Per Minute (Blacksmith/Warner Bros.), and Kweli is still standing tough.
It’s been more than 11 years since Dante “Mos Def” Smith and Talib Kweli Greene released their subgenre-defining Mos Def & Talib Kweli are Black Star (Rawkus, 1998). VIBE looked back on the rise of Rawkus and Black Star in the 1998 retrospective package of our June/July Real Rap Issue, and spoke with the accomplished but humble Kweli, 32, about the genesis of that album, getting back together with Hi-Tek, and his unlikely Twitter pal: Diddy.
VIBE: What brought you and Hi-Tek together again?
Talib Kweli: When me and Hi-Tek did [Black Star and Reflection Eternal’s Train of Thought], we worked hard. Being with somebody all the time, I think we were burnt out from just working so hard on the albums. So I didn’t even really see Hi-Tek for a couple years—but it was never no love lost. Every time my name was brought up with him, he was like, “I love Kweli,” but then that whole energy died down and we started working on each other’s projects. If you look at Beautiful Struggle, Hi-Tek did three beats on that project. He does at least two or three beats on everything I put out. I been on every one of his albums. But this just had to be right for us to come together and do a follow-up album and right now the business is right.
One thing we talk about in the office is the idea of the single producer album and how that trend is almost entirely absent in hip hop right now. Did you have that on your mind at all?
Yeah, I mean I’ve done albums with Hi-Tek, I’ve done a whole album with Madlib, Liberation. I’m definitely a fan of the single producer album. However, I love hip hop so much that if I can’t [find] someone to give me the time and effort to do that, I’m gonna put out a album which is why you got my solo albums.
How is the new Reflection Eternal stuff turning out so far?
Oh, it’s beautiful. It sounds incredible. It sounds absolutely gorgeous. One of the best and brightest hip hop records of ’09.
Did you guys do anything different?
We’re older, we’re more experienced, so those are natural differences that you’re gonna see—but we’re working smart.
Do you remember when you became aware of Rawkus and how exactly did you become a part of the label?
I became aware of Rawkus when I was a teenager, and I use to rap with John Forté and he told me he knew some white boys who went to Brown who was starting a label. I had a group called Population Clique [before] they changed the name of the group to the Rose Family. But back then it was called the Population Clique. And we all used to hang out drinking 40s and smoking weed. Forté [brought] these two white dudes, Jarret [Myer] and Brian [Brater], to the block on Franklin Avenue and Park Place right in the middle of Crown Heights. And it was just a desolate area at the time and Forté [brought] these two white boys from Brown to the ’hood. They sat there in a room with about 30 dudes who rap, everybody spit, everybody bust for them and they signed about half the groups or artists in that room that day. I didn’t sign with them then. It was another two or three years before I really met them.
Who else was in that room?
There was this group called Seven Universal, which was two dudes who rap, then it was Population Clique, there was a dude called Problems who rapped—Problem Child was his name, actually. He was 16 years old, he was our young rapper, he was our Lil’ Bow Wow. It was a one-bedroom apartment and that was his spot.
Was that moment a turning point in your career?
Nah, when I met them at that stage in my career me and John started running the streets. [John] was working for Stress Entertainment, he was managed by Stress, which managed him, Funkmaster Flex, DJ Enuff, and Biz Markie at the time. We were getting to all the parties, I was meeting rappers, I was having meetings at the label, running my demo tape around. I was doing open mics.
You know the turning point for me is when Rawkus put out Company Flow [ed: Company Flow’s 1997 debut, Funcrusher Plus] and they were getting ready for the Mos Def record. And I was just chatting with Mos Def about how me and Hi-Tek had this group called Reflection Eternal and how we tried to get a deal. He was like, “Yo, you need to fuck with Rawkus. You need to fuck wit Jarret and Brian. I’m like, “Jarret and Brian who fucked wit John Forté?” It never even crossed my mind to do something with them but I need to go take a meeting with them. So I went to take a meeting with them trying to get a deal. Me and Hi-Tek had a little EP called Ground Ish [and] I was trying to get them to put out the first song from that and by mistake I played the song “Fortified Live” from my cassette tape. I wasn’t even trying to play that record in the meeting and they heard it and they were like, “What’s that?” And I said, “Oh, this some shit we working on” and it wasn’t mixed or nothing. They was like, “We can put that out right now and we can give you a video.” And that was my first record with them.
The first deal we did with Rawkus was a 12” for me and Hi-Tek to do a Reflection Eternal 12”, which was “2000 Seasons.” Then with no talk of doing a Reflection Eternal album, Mos Def and I (because he was on the single) started performing at a lot of open mics and underground events together. I would come on his set; he would come on my set. I don’t know whose idea it was first because Jarret at Rawkus and Mos Def came at me at the same time talking about we should do a project together. So it could introduce both of us to the marketplace. But it was definitely Mos Def that came up with the name Black Star.
What was your impression of that idea, when you first heard it, about doing a project with Mos?
At that point me and Mos Def weren’t good friends. We knew each other and it was a mutual respect. It was respect based off the music. I was a fan of his music and no one could tell me Mos Def wasn’t one of the illest MC’s. I ain’t care about the singing or the acting or none of that. That was all good. He was talented but just on a rap level, as an MC, I was a Mos Def fan. He had a record out with his first group UTD [Urban Thermo Dynamics]. They were phenomenal so, on the underground open mic and Washington Square Park scene before Mos was known on a national scene, I was just a fan of Mos Def. When he was like, “Let’s do it,” it was a no-brainer to me.
What was the concept behind the album?
Mos had something about a black star being like a star that collapses onto itself and he had all these astrological scientific ideas. When he said, “black star” I immediately was like, Damn Marcus Garvey, [that’s my] my whole thing. I didn’t know what he was talking about with that other shit. I was like, “Yeah, Marcus Garvey, Black Star”—so it sort of became both of those things.
Did you guys know immediately what the music was gonna sound like, what your interplay was gonna be like on the record, things like that?
Well, we knew we wanted to work with Hi-Tek, we wanted to work with J. Rawls from Columbus. So we knew we just wanted that sound. We ended up having 88-Keys, Shawn J. Period, Mr. Walt from Da Beatminerz but the initial sound was Hi-Tek with a little J. Rawls sprinkled in. We were doing a lot of open mics and we were chilling. We were doing poetry at these open mics—we knew we had good lyrics at the time. What was happening was it was no vinyl and that’s where Rawkus succeeded. The music industry was moving away from vinyl, but vinyl is a part of the heart of hip hop and kids that are into hip hop love the format of vinyl, so the hip hop industry, which was led by Puff and Bad Boy at the time, wasn’t concerned about that. They were moving towards the producer and the production: As long as you got somebody making a hit, that’s all it is, who cares about whether the DJ is spinning real vinyl. But they left out a bunch of kids, and Rawkus was extremely successful by pressing out vinyl for these kids that were searching for vinyl and searching for images and songs that weren’t about being in the club drinking champagne. I’m talking about when I’m 16, 17, 18 years old. I go to the club now and I may have some champagne as a grown-ass man but when I was first coming into the game that wasn’t what I was thinking about or rapping about. I couldn’t relate to it, none of that. And Rawkus found that audience.
Were you surprised by the album’s success? Did you guys feel that you had hits on there?
You know, everything is relative. When it actually happened I was looking at myself as an underground rapper. We came out in October. The Black Star album came out the same day as Brand Nubian, A Tribe Called Quest, OutKast, and a couple of other people I don’t even remember right now. I remember there were like five major hip hop releases that day. Brand Nubian, their return album, Foundation; OutKast’s Aquemini—big albums, and I remember we sold 30,000 records. For a new artist coming out now, 30,000 records…in 1998, that was considered a good try. If a new group came out today—no hits, and no nothing, and sold 30,000 records, that would be a huge success for everybody. Imagine somebody you never heard of come out and they sell 30,000 in the first week. That ain’t happening in this age. Soulja Boy, one of the biggest artists, sold 45K his first week on his last album. I’ve never sold less than that. After that Reflection sold 60, Beautiful Struggle sold 50, Quality sold 75…It’s just relative. It was successful enough in my mind.
Did most people look at it as sort of a refuge from the Bad Boy era or did they see it as a launching pad for something different?
Yeah, I mean, definitely. March 9, Biggie passed away, the year Biggie passed away we were still doing Lyricist’s Lounge stuff. We did the Lyricist’s Lounge two weeks after Biggie passed. I’ll never forget Puff came to the Lyricist’s Lounge. Now me and Puff talk on Twitter but back then—that’s my homie—but back then it was like, that was just like, “Oh my God, Puff Daddy actually showed up to an underground event.” It was mind blowing. It was unheard of. And you forget that he comes from this. And you forget, the reason he signed Big is that he loved real hip hop. Why do people forget that he loves real hip hop? Because he’s been so successful. He came to the Lyricist’s Lounge on some wanted to check out the Mos Def−Talib Kweli show and I was going for straight up animosity towards him like what the fuck is he doing here?
Does that feel misguided now?
Yeah, it seemed understandable at the time but now I’m a little older, a little more experienced. It definitely was misguided because people are ignorant about where these influences come from and who these people are. As a fan, you don’t see what someone went through to get there. You just see where they’re at.
Don’t you think, in a way, it fueled the identity of the label though? A lot of people really connected with the idea of you as an alternative.
You’re right, but here’s the problem. Had I just ran with that whole idea, “I am the anti-Puff,” instead of embracing [commercial music]—it wouldn’t last. We all do this together. There’s a lot more I have in common with Puff and Jay-Z than different, so I’m not gonna embrace the differences the media wants me to embrace. If I had done that, the same way that we’re talking about, reminiscing about Rawkus in 1998 and how dope it was, you’ll be reminiscing about Kweli. You’ll be like, “Remember when Mos Def and Kweli…” But Mos Def and Kweli, we’re still here. If we maintained those ideas we would be relics.
Watch the video for Black Star's "Definition"
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