Talib Kweli

Published on Sunday, September 27 2009

Written by Super User

Talib admits that he was drawn to Afro centric rappers such as De La Soul and various members of the Native Tongues Posse in his youth and it was his creativity, talent and imagination which eventually led to his collaboration with high school pal and rapper, Mos Def. As luck would have it, they met producer, Hi-Tek and soon they formed a group called Black Star.Talib's debut in was 1997 with a group from Cincinnati, Ohio called MOOD (Main Flow, Donte, Jahson) with an album called DOOM, shortly after that Black Star achieved some mainstream success their 1998 release on Rawkus Records. It wasn't long before Talib befriended Dave Chappelle who eventually hosted a Block Party featuring Kweli, Kayne West, The Roots, and The Fugees.Kweli released a critically acclaimed solo debut, Quality in 2002, which contained Kanye West's single, Get By. In 2004, he released his second solo album, The Beautiful Struggle that contained a plethora of socio-political content and soon after, he surprised us once more with his album Liberation.Recently, Kweli had his album release party for Eardrum, his latest and greatest. You can expect some surprise collaborations combined with strong powerful messages that just goes to show that within music there are philosophies, theories and ideas that can create a better world.Talib believes that whether you're black, Asian or Caucasian, there is a commonality that we all share - life's struggles. He admits that a majority of his music deals with black self-love, black self-esteem and black self-worth.Talib is right, whatever ethnic heritage one comes from, people can relate to his lyrics in one way or another. We, at Young Hollywood think Talib is on the path to becoming a rap visionary and support him and his music, wholeheartedly.

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