Eardrum

Eardrum review

Born in Brooklyn

Afro-American singer Talib Kweli was born in Brooklyn, New-York in 1975. His name speaks for itself - "Talib" in Arabic means "student", and "Kweli" is translated from Swahili as "true". A guy with such name was destined to make public career. Unsurprisingly, in his teens Kweli joined the company of young Brooklyn rappers and started recording in 1997. He became popular for his unusual rhymes and passionate lyrics. No wonder Kweli was so skilled in writing rap monologues, exposing social problems and unequality - his mother is a professor of English, while the father is a professor of sociology. Young MC and his fellows from the group Black Star released several albums and singles, appeared on TV, but for a long time were popular only in tight cirles of rap music. The real fame of the alternative rapper came to Kweli in 2002 with the single Get By from the solo work Quality. His second personal creation The Beautiful Struggle was highly praized by critics in 2004. After the creation of his own label Blacksmith Records Kweli finished the record of the third solo album Eardrum in August, 2007.

Eardrum: politics, religion and some autobiography

Eardrum preserved emotional and witty verses of Kweli, while the sounding became more mainsteam-like. In the track Eat to Live the MC discusses the social roots of poverty. He also speculates over the rap, its state for today and his own status in rap circles in the song Listen!!!, that can be called the lead song of the album. Kweli expands the theme of women in Hot Thing. But these are all classical topics, already heard. What is very peculiar of the Eardrum - Kweli speaks about religion in his tracks Jesus Walks, Hostile Gospel, Pt.1(Deliver Us) and Hostile Gospel, Pt.2 (Deliver Me). The two last mentioned compositions are memorable by the use of Afroamerican gospels in the records. Kweli included into the work a touching ode to his children, Oh My Stars. Stay Around is a joke song about the fan croud, advising Talib, what to do. Everything Man is also written about fans, in this song different people tell about the first time they heard the MC. In spite of featuring many guest artists on the record, the most striking is his duet with celebrited pop-artist Justin Timberlake in the funky-beated The Nature, closing track of the Eardrum.

Talib Kweli: the rising rap star

The most significant attribute of hip-hop are words. Talib Kweli can boast of excellent manage of the language. Though the music is also important - it turns verses into songs, makes them reach the hearts of the listeners. And in this respect Eardrum is qualitatively better, then the previous Kweli's albums - it has more good beats. The majority of the tracks are at least decent, some are even great. Eardrum makes it clear, why 50 Cent and Jay-Z call themselves the fans of Talib Kweli and put much hope into him. The quality of the album may be attributed to the wide range of famous producers, the rapper worked with. But more possibly it is the personal credit of Kweli - the artist perfects his skill, taking into the consideration the defects of his past records. Eardrum, having a firm commertial success, is for sure the rapper's strongest album. It brought him to a new level of popularity, giving the opportunity to arrange shows in Europe in September. Now the question of wourld-wide acknowledgement depends fully on the Kweli's talent and ability to fascinate the audience.