ISO 9000-Certified Hip-Hop

Talib Kweli

Quality

Rawkus/MCA

This is a dense album, so full of invention it's tough to appreciate at first, even if it's always impressive. The production ranges freely from nu-soul to club-thumpin' to DJ Quik's cool West Coast funk and back to Blueprint-style old-school soul samples. The variety doesn't let you settle into the album much, which is not helped by the fact that many of these songs don't settle into a groove and let you start nodding your head for too long. The opening song, "Feel the Rush," gets its velocity in about five seconds with a crescendo of bumps and Kweli's words rushing like wind over the suddenly-present track, and you get whiplash from the acceleration.

But Kweli's vocals are submerged in the mix, at least more so than in most hip-hop records, and the first impression is that Kweli is flowing not over but through the music, the lyrics another thread within the aural tapestry. A later song, "Shock Body," seems to shift tempo every ten seconds, an illusion created as a flighty brass sample is repeatedly dissolved by big, more deliberate drum hits. Big, expensive-sounding textures (many provided by upstart producer kanye West) dominate the album early: swooning strings, the aforementioned brass, and Dirty South-style clackety-clack piano and percussion, and bright, even fierce chords hammered home. It's dizzying, and Kweli seems to realize this, so we slow waaay down with "Talk to You (Lil' Darlin')," an acoustic track with live musicians and Bilal, and my mind was still racing enough from the preceding confusion that I couldn't really get a handle on it.

The only track that made an immediately comprehensible impression the first time through for me was "Guerrilla Monsoon Rap," costarring Black Thought (of the Roots) and Pharaohe Monche (formerly of Organized Konfusion). A classic posse cut, this establishes Kweli's rhyme M.O., which is not necessarily to go modifier-for-modifier with these two giants of the underground. Rather, Kweli swings harder around the beat than any other modern MC, dancing almost, establishing counterrhythms and interior rhythms and occasionally landing just to remind you that he knows where the beat is. His nasal voice melds nicely with West's comparatively spare track, the lines he spits are inventive, and his off-beat rhythms consistently invigorate his words.

On repeated listens, thanks to their interest and Kweli's voice, the words start emerging from the mix, and they're quite incisive when he wants them to be —check "The Proud" for a haunting commentary on terrorism over a murky, ominous beat, or "Just to Get By" for Kweli's State of the Union address to a party-beat crowd, or even "Joy," an exhilarating tale of the birth of Kweli's children over the most straightforward hip-hop beat on the album, for a frustrated digression on the vagaries of the health-care system. But the real genius of Kweli is still in his verbal rhythms. "Talk to You (Lil' Darlin)" is a good example. Despite the presence of live musicians, which does jazz things up a bit (sorry), musically it's not that far from Common and Mary J. ("The Queen of Hip-Hop Soul, Nickname Copyright 2002 By Columbia Records, All Rights Reserved") Blige's "Come Close." But while Common lays his saccharine (albeit seductive) rhymes right on the beat, Kweli refuses himself that kind of relaxation, and his rhymes take on a intriguingly desperate quality completely foreign to "Come Close" simply because of Kweli's flow.

And eventually, the sonic extravagance becomes less confusing and more satisfying, as one comes to expect the twists and turns and can better appreciate their artfulness. The kanye West production is the real surprise, as Kweli was previously associated with the artful, spare thump of DJ Hi-Tek production; at first, hearing his rhymes amid such splendor is disconcerting in itself. But West has a real feel for laying down the hip-hop pomp and circumstance, keeping it moving while making Kweli the master of a grand ceremony.

Though the album is titled Quality, not everything about it has been double-checked; Dave Chappelle and Savion Glover both have really, really pointless cameos that sap the flowing energy, and the last third of the album gets bogged down in one too many soggy R&B-flavored tracks (if it were me, I would eliminate "Where Do We Go," an especially leaden song). But Kweli's second solo effort is a pretty amazing album, even if that's not apparent on the opening listen. Many albums make a pleasant first impression and fade quickly, but over time, Quality holds up quite nicely.

 

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