Rock and Pop: Interview with American Hip-Hop lyricist Talib Kweli
Published: 14 October 2010
by ROISIN GADELRAB
IF skills sold truth be told, I’d probably be, lyrically Talib Kweli,” so sang Jay-Z in his 2003 album track Moment of Clarity.
It’s a line that haunts rapper Talib, a sign of the high regard he holds with the hip-hop fraternity, who covet this wordsmith’s tongue.
But Talib, widely seen as one of America’s greatest hip-hop lyricists, doesn’t mind. In fact, he says: “I take it as a huge compliment. Don’t be fooled, I’ve dumbed down lyrics before. I just haven’t done it at the level Jay-Z has. I’ve songs where I’m having fun, playing around and I like those songs. Sometimes that works but I haven’t made a career out of it like Jay-Z.”
Talib plays Lyrical Alliance at the Roundhouse on Saturday, joining leading Arab hip-hop artists including Algeria’s Rabah Ourrad, British Palestinian MC Shadia Mansour, dubbed the first lady of Arabic hip-hop, Palestinian Israeli Tamer Nafar, who sings in Arabic, Hebrew and English, Lebanon’s Rayess Bek and VJ Jana Saleh and Jordanian rapper Samm.
It’s a night where the Middle East meets West and Arab hip-hop takes centre stage.
So where does Talib fit in? Not so naturally, he admits.
“I’ve never heard Arab hip-hop or been to a country where the language is Arabic,” he says. “I’m definitely excited about doing something different and possibly learning more about hip-hop in another language.”
Although artists like Mansour are particularly political, Talib’s not picking sides. He says: “[Palestine and Israel] need to work harder at getting along and hitting extremists who too often misrepresent what rational, sane people think. I don’t think extremism on any side is warranted. But I also recognise we live in a world where the struggle of the Palestinians is under-represented in my view. I believe in fairness, balance and clarity so anything that brings eyes to that I’m down with it.”
Talib believes the oppressed have always adapted to hip-hop. “Hip-hop is folk music not in the sense of soft focus, it speaks the language of people at the time when they are still speaking it. A lot of music speaks a language from years back – hip-hop often speaks the language of the reality existing right now.”
Album Gutter Rainbows, his childhood name for puddle oil slicks, a phenomenon he recently discovered immortalised as “gasoline rainbows” in classic novel Catcher in the Rye, is out in November.
Talib says: “When the rain and dirt mix together, it forms a little rainbow. When I was a little kid, not knowing it was from oil and pollution, I was just thinking, wow that’s nice.
“You know when you live in a city and there’s a heavy wind and the wind tunnels through the buildings and forms these little rainstorms, these little tiny tornadoes, you can see the leaves sort of dancing? That’s like an inner-city tornado.
“There’s things in the city that are nature that happen because of man-made things, buildings, pollution, but somehow nature seems to find a way to give us rainbows, tornadoes.”
• Lyrical Alliance featuring Talib Kweli, Roundhouse, Saturday, £22.50, 0844 482 8008 www.roundhouse.org.uk