Alright I jammed the Kweli album this morning at work, so here's the feedback. Kweli has always been on my radar as a rap fan due to his appearances on Kanye songs back in the day, and being half of Black Star, which I consider one of the best hip hop albums of all time. But, in any given situation where I've heard him, he's never been my favorite. His voice didn't really do it for me. So, I never really dove into him beyond his biggest hits. This album started solid, and was just about exactly what I was expecting. As it went on, he grew on me more and more. One thought I had during some of the early songs like Back Up Offa Me and We Know is that he could have easily blown up as a bigger solo act, but I have my theories as to why he didn't. The main three factors that I consider are
1. I don't get the impression he was ever overtly trying to be a big star, so fair enough.
2. Again, for me, his voice limits him somewhat, it's just not as enrapturing as many of the top rappers.
3. I feel like Common kinda cornered the market on conscious rap during the mid-2000s and conscious rap as a whole was on the decline after the 90s, so there just wasn't "room" for multiple superstars in this lane.
Anyways, the back to back tracks of Around My Way and We Got The Beat were the peak of the album for me. I'm not religious in any way but rap songs about faith do tend to be really good, and I loved the change in pace, going from maybe the most soulful song on the album into a song that sounded like something from Stankonia, complete with the interpolation of Planet Rock bu Afrika Bambaataa. Very nice. From there, the rest of the album was pretty steady with Beautiful Struggle as the perfect outro for the album.
All things considered, no duds on the album for me with a few tracks that surprised me with how much I liked them. I won't say that this album made me a Kweli fan but it's definitely given me a different perspective on him.
