The collaboration of Talib Kwlei soul singer Res–also known as Idle Warship–blasted through the East Coast last week, playing two shows at Southpaw in Brooklyn and The Black Cat in DC. The dynamic duo went on tour to support their latest full length, Habits of the Heart which was released last month. Check it.

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I was just talking with Couch Sessions writer @CM_3 at the Happy Hour yesterday about the best star powered duos in hip-hop, and it instantly became a discussion about Black Star. Hard to believe that is’ been 12 years since they last put out a project. There were always hints about a proper reunion from both sides (when we interviewed Talib a few years ago he talked about it) but this leaked Madlib produced track may be hinting at something for 2012. Was Mos jealous that that other duo released this week? Who knows. Either way it’s a great day for hip-hop.

(photo of Talib at the Manifesto Festival 2010 by Philippe Nyirimihigo. Please Support.) 

If skills sold, truth be told / I’d probably be, lyrically, Talib Kweli – Jay-Z, “Moment of Clarity”

Talib Kweli’s brand of conscious emceeing would at first appearance not be the most congruous fit for a performance at Washington, DC’s Park at Fourteenth nightclub. It’s the kind of spot that attracts those obsessed with Rolex watches and champagne wishes, not those informed by beautiful struggles or gutter rainbows. However, it’s a testament to the successfully realized aspirations of those who were drawn to hip hop during Kweli’s most active era of emceeing that the booking made sense. Talib Kweli hasn’t traded in baggy jeans, sneakers and fitted caps for tailored suits, but, from the jam packed crowd, many in his original fan base have. In a performance that was an odd remembrance of things past for a large portion of the crowd in attendance, Kweli’s Beny Blaq Entertainment promoted set on Friday night at Park at 14th showcased the end game of hip hop’s most mainstream era.

Talib Kweli worked with a slew of the most motivated performers of hip hop in the first decade of the 21st century. From rapping alongside Mos Def as Black Star on their phenomenal eponymous 1998 debut to slaying Kanye West’s staccato percussion marvel “Get By” from 2002′s Quality, he, alongside those performers set a untouchable standard for the art of earnest emceeing. On his latest debut independent release Gutter Rainbows, he samples Jay-Z’s famous Kweli praising line regarding the mainstream’s distaste for pure lyricism from “Moment of Clarity.” Unlike Jigga, he’s a rare artist who has not altered his dependency upon his supreme lyrical gift to excel. On Friday night, that gift was in typical form, as in starting from Mos Def’s “Umi Says” to ending with “Get By,” and winding through hits like the incredibly frenetic, Fugees “Vocab” hook sampling “Definition,” and hitting upon his latest material, it was a celebration of one of the golden eras of hip hop lyricism.

Jiggy nightclubs are an intriguing realm for rap music. As hip hop has crossed over into a more moneyed class of American society, the necessity for heavy percussion, body jacking breaks, and intensely philosophical or intellectual lyricism has waned considerably. Billboard’s pop charts and nightclub playlists clearly show that there is a home for hook friendly and elegantly melodic tunes. In places where $10 martinis accompany bohemian rhapsodies, “real rappers” doing “real rap” often don’t exist. Many in the crowd at Park on Friday night came up in a rap universe where smoky clubs, street corners, and freestyle ciphers decided who topped the charts. Now, these decisions are made over conference tables in air conditioned board rooms. Talib Kweli performed at Park at Fourteenth. Hip hop done changed.

“If skills sold, truth be told, I’d probably be lyrically Talib Kweli.”
- Jay Z

The first time I heard Talib Kweli was when Black Star dropped, and I can remember thinking that Mos Def was LIGHT YEARS ahead of this dude. But one of my peoples Sha swore up and down that it was the complete opposite.

And of course I thought he was on crack.

It wouldn’t be until Reflection Eternal dropped their debut for me to realized how dope Kweli was. That’s when I could understand what Sha was talking about. This dude was a lyrical problem, and as a group, Reflection Eternal had that GangStarr and Pete Rock and CL Smooth magic going on. But right after Kweli dropped another classic album with his group, just like with Black Star, they went on a hiatus. Kweli wasn’t a slouch while Mos caught the acting bug, and Tek got down with Dre’s Aftermath camp cause he’s now up to his fourth studio album. My only beef with a lot of Kweli’s discography is outside of his debut solo album “Quality” is that I always felt like the bulk of Kweli’s beats never fit him just right. He’s has that type of style that doesn’t sound right over every track and I can’t really explain it but those 2000 Hi Tek beats and those 2002 Kanye beats and ANY beat from the late, great J Dilla seem to fit Kweli perfect.

Now, with all of that said, how does his newest release “Gutter Rainbows” fit in this equation? Good question.

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Gutter Rainbows sets off lovely with the title track produced by M-Phazes and “So Low” produced by Shuko which are both real dope. “Palookas” with Sean Price has Kweli and Sean P. going in on this ill Marco Polo produced track, while “Wait For You” with Kendra Ross produced by S1 gives you that real dope cool out vibe. “Friends and Family” produced by E. Jones is a dope song that has Kweli talking about him coming up in the music game and shouting out all of his fam but the chorus just kills the whole vibe for me. “Uh Oh” with Jean Grae is just flat out stupid with Jean MURDERING this Oh No track but “Gutter Rainbow’s” shinning star is EASILY the album’s 1st single “Cold Rain” produced by Ski Beatz.

At the end of the Day, Kweli reminds me of my dude Andre Iguodala who plays for the Sixers. Igs is an extremely dope ball player but in my opinion will never really showcase his full potential cause he’s playing in a system that doesn’t his style. Now put Igs out in Phoenix or in a D’Antonio up tempo type system and this dude could be an all star every year but while he’s stuck playing in the Sixer’s halfcourt offense, he’ll always just be known as the other A.I. in Philly. I feel like Kweli is an ILL mc but for some reasons it seems like a lot of the beats he picks don’t really compliment him. And it’s not that all of these tracks don’t fit him or that they’re wack but I look at Kweli as that special brand of mc who has the talent to bang out classic after classic and in my opinion he hasn’t done that and it’s not the rhymes’s fault. But don’t get it twisted Gutter Rainbows is a dope listen and if you’re a Kweli fan, you’ll mos def dig it, but for me, it just falls short of what I was expecting this time around from Kweli.

3.5 outta 5

Mos and Talib start off 2010 their collab “History,” which was off of his album The Ecstatic. Unfortunately, as Talib told us in September, there is no sign of a Blackstar reunion (which would go over better than Reflection Eternal, let’s be honest), but we can dream can’t we?

Check a snippet of the Talib interview that we co-produced with Subsoniq last year. He talks about the song “History,” and why a Blackstar reunion might never happen:

Beautiful Photos by Philippe N, aka Star P. Please support.

Before Reflection Eternal hit the stage on Sunday, Toronto MC Tona performed giving the crowd some of his grimey, Detroit style flavor. DJ Scratch of the Roots was a highlight, his beatboxing/sampling/drum kit mashups got everyone energized. Afterwards Torontonian Colin Munroe did a set, perhaps best known internationally for his Remix of Kanye West’s Flashing Lights entitled I want those flashing lights that went viral in early 2008. The pop singer/producer came out hard but the crowd didn’t seem to be too hyped. Maybe it was just too pop…

After tons of delay and much anticipation for Reflection Eternal (not to mention some technical difficulties), Hi-Tek finally emerged on stage. It was kind of surprising that nobody cheered for him at all during the 10 minutes that he was up there doing a sound check (show the DJ some love!), but Talib was obviously what people were waiting for. Talib’s lyricism was mad impressive as always, he spit through some hot new Reflection Eternal tracks off of their up and coming album Revolutions Per Minute (no release date yet), and classic tracks like The Blast made the show. It was obvious that they hadn’t played together in a while though, and they seemed out of sync at points with Hi-Tek abruptly stopping the tracks out of unison and Talib looking back at him in confusion.

The show ended with a performance of the obvious crowd pleaser Get By. It honestly was not the hardest hitting rendition of the song, but it did the trick nonetheless.

Beautiful Photos by Philippe N, aka Star P. Please support.

With so much happening in the States it’s easy to forget about us up North, but this weekend Toronto was host to the 3^rd annual Manifesto festival, celebrating the dopest talent in all areas of Hip-Hop culture. Last year the legendary DJ Premier and Pete Rock played for the first time ever together, and this year 9^th Wonder was chillin’ and spinning, Jeru the Damaja was on hand and Talib Kweli and DJ Hi-Tek chose to reunite for the first time in years as Reflection Eternal. Not too bad! The official Canada Pro Bboy competition and a youth festival in the heart of the Parkdale neighborhood were just two of the events in this 5-day festival as well.

“Hip-hop is the music of the youth,” said Music Director for the festival Jesse Ohtake, “before Manifesto there was Canadian Music Week, but nothing that catered hip-hop specifically.” The festival has been gaining momentum ever since it’s conception 3 years ago, and this year it saw some crazy enthusiasm and support from the city, even including an appearance and shout out from the mayor. Opening on Wednesday night with a mini film festival, audiences caught back-to-back screenings of celebrated Bboy doc The Freshest Kids and Internationally renowned director Jon Reiss’s graffiti doc Bomb It (both flicks with notable appearances from KRS-One, what’s a hip-hop history lesson without him?) .

Much hyped from the last 2 years of the festival, the 3 floor art Exhibition was apparently the party to be at and it definitely delivered. 3 floors of insanely innovative art from the likes of Nunca (Brazil), Roadsworth (Montreal), local Toronto graphic/toy designer We Kill You, Alexa Hatanaka, Omen, Case and Chris Dyer. Hip-hop beats were supplied by local Dj’s all night and free ice cream sandwiches made the event a pleasure for all senses.

On Sunday, the last day of the festival, the sun was shining all day and  thankfully  good vibes were aplenty in downtown Toronto’s Nathan Phillip’s Square. Earlier in the day local up and coming MC’s like KJ and Jahvon performed on the main stage, making way for veteran Toronto MC’s like Solitair and the Black Jays. Toronto duo Art of Fresh, consisting of D.O. and Slakah the Beatchild, have been making big moves all year and performed at Manifesto for the first time right off of an international tour. “This is a huge outlet for the amount of artists that we have in the city,” they said, “and in Toronto it’s not like we have one or two guys doing it, we have a whole community that’s doing it and in a lot of different areas. This is a beautiful thing.”

Gaining more and more momentum every year, Manifesto is an amazing festival that brings the Dot’s hip-hop community together for some much needed bonding. Everything from the execution to the stylistic choices was on point, and next year should be even better.

What would you do for another Black Star album?! Okay, so we can’t deliver on your Black Star demands but what the crew on Subsoniq Radio does deliver on is a great in depth interview with the Brooklyn born rapper Talib Kweli. Hear all of the gruesome details behind the making of the new Reflection Eternal album and how he ended up collaborating with Asher Roth. For all you die-hard Black Star fiends, Talib does get into the likeliness of another Black Star album.

So tune in tonight from 7pm – 10pm EST on Backspin (Sirius 39, XM 65, Direct TV 846, Dish 6039)

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This Tuesday, September 22nd, lyricist Talib Kweli stops by on Subsoniq Radio to give up the details on the upcoming release of “Reflection Eternal-Back Again” with Hi-Tek, while also discussing collaborations with Asher Roth, Wale and Kid Cudi and even the possibilities of another Black Star album with Mos Def.

Our good friends over at Subsoniq gave us a sneak preview of the interview below. Check for complete interview airing on September 22 at 7pm EST on Subsoniq on Sirius/XM’s Back Spin (Siri 39, XM 65, Direct TV 846, Dish 6039)

On Wednesday, the Ecstatic tour rolls through Baltimore featuring Mos Sef, Talib Kwlei, Jay Electronica, and Media Green. The lineup speaks for itself, but if you haven’t seen these acts live or missed your opportunity to see Mos and Talib when they rolled through DC, then you need to be at this event. Tickets are still available, and The Couch Sessions peeps will definitely be in the building for this one.

From what everybody told me, the Suite for Ma Dukes performance out in LA last Sunday was as good as promised. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it out to the West Coast for this performance (I might fly out in April for David Axlerod though), but at least someone was able to snap some video of Talib Kweli and De La Soul performing “Stakes Is High,” and Illa J singing over ” Fall in Love”. (via Blind I for the Kids, Needledrop Twitter)

The good news for the rest of us that aren’t on the Left Coast? The’re was a film crew on hand, and a DVD will be available soon.

So yeah, Ms. Monae’s dip in the pool and now the reunting of Mos Def with Talib Kweli have proven that the Grammy parties are much better than the actual ceremony. Tunji Balogun from Year of the Blacksmith shot this video on stage during the performance as they teamed up to perform “Definition” and “Respiration.”