Music Review: Talib Kweli - Beautiful Struggle & Mos Def - New Danger

Beautiful Struggle - Talib Kweli – (Geffen Records, 2004)) &
New Danger – (Universal Music, 2004)

When Mos Def’s New Danger and Talib Kweli’s The Beautiful Struggle hit record stores this fall, Hip Hop fans held their breath and hoped for another Black Star. We remembered the hope that album sprung in people, and a moment in music when everyone got excited about Hip Hop again. Albums like Black Star re-amped (and quickly exhausted) a conversation about who Hip Hop speaks for, what it should say, and what responsibilities it claims. Many dreamed of seeing Hip Hop return to a supposedly more authentic past when it gave voice to disenfranchised youth and rebelled against racism and the power structure. Every music reviewer, intellectual, or what Common calls ‘coffee house chick’ became an overnight expert. Rappers like Kweli and Mos Def became pawns in a largely rhetorical argument for a new-old kind of Hip Hop, purified of greed and commercialism.

Eventually, the album and the artists came to occupy a strange position in this dialogue about musical authenticity. Along with traditional heads, Black Star attracted an audience new to Hip Hop, bringing much-needed publicity to what had been an underground scene. But this new audience (and the record labels, booking agents, venues, and media that market to them) came to control public perceptions of that scene and the rise and fall of artists in the industry.

In response, corporate-sponsored artists cynically played up their own authenticity, while many labeled conscious rappers like Kweli and Mos Def 'college kid rap.'

The new albums, of course, are not another Black Star. They couldn't be: the original hope, joy, and innocence that accompanied that album could not survive the cultural and political moment where it landed.

Both these albums deal with issues of audience and authenticity, but in different ways. The Beautiful Struggle has no center: the old confidence and focus on the struggle are gone. It doesn't want to be a purely political album, but ultimately leaves us guessing. We get few glimpses of the Kweli we know in an album with passionless songs with names like ‘Back Up Offa Me’ and pointless morality tales like ‘Broken Glass.’

But while most critics are crying 'sell out', it's not that simple. The beats are more mainstream, and the dance song ‘We Got the Beat,’ is obviously an attempt to win radio play. Kweli sounds like he’s trying to fill Tupac’s shoes, looking for a mass appeal that will gain him yet another kind of authenticity. But whether he's 'selling out' or not, Talib Kweli clearly fell off musically with this one.

New Danger also aims to open up a discussion on audience and authenticity. This multi-genre album features sounds, beats, and symbolism from jazz, R&B, blues, and Chuck Berry-style rock and roll. Mos Def has a point to make: Hip Hop is not the only form of American black music, and rock and roll is not a white art form. Unlike The Beautiful Struggle, this album sounds great.

'The Boogie Man Song' is rough and jazzy, while 'Bedstuy Parade and Funeral March' is reminiscent of old blues. The collaborations work well: some tracks debut Mos Def's rock band Black Jack Johnson, and 'Sunshine' features Kanye West. But while creative, New Danger is a little flat; Mos Def clearly doesn't feel mastery over the broad span of music he features in this album.

The cover of New Danger features Mos Def dressed in blackface, holding his fingers like a gun to his own head. Both new albums are attempts by the artists to deal with the conscious Hip Hop paradox: how to be the minstrel that kills the minstrel.

Docia Buffington is an organizer for the YCL, and coordinator of the 2004 Midwest Elections Project. She lives in Brooklyn New York.