Once Passion Pit was announced as the headliner for the A&O Ball, we all had our bets on who the “special guest” might be. Perhaps some group of shaggy hipsters playing beat-up guitars in flannel? Some cute indie chick with bangs and a beret playing a vintage Casio keyboard? Or maybe some giant collective of Canadians playing snare drums and French horns?
If you guessed any of these (and good guesses they were), you were wrong. Really wrong. Sharing the bill with Passion Pit is Talib Kweli, the Brooklyn MC who frequently shares stages with Kanye, Mos Def and Common, but never those cute little synth rockers from Cambridge who write EPs dedicated to their girlfriends.
Kweli, born Talib Kweli Greene, is the son of two City College of New York professors. His first name means “student” in Arabic, and his middle name means “truth” in Swahili. His educated upbringing shows in his masterful rhymes, which are some of the most intelligent in hip-hop.
In the late ‘90s, Kweli was one half of Black Star, arguably one of the best New York alternative hip-hop acts ever, which also included fellow Brooklynite Mos Def. After Mos gave up rapping for an acting career, Kweli, alongside Hi-Tek as duo group Reflection Eternal, released 2000’s Train of Thought, a fantastic collection of thoughtful hip-hop.
This was followed by 2002’s Quality, an equally adept album, which featured a fuller instrumental sound, but not without Kweli’s muscular lyrical prowess. Right About Now (2005) revealed a harder Kweli spitting with a little more fire than his previous releases, yet it still featured the beautiful dedication to Lauryn Hill, “Ms. Hill.” Talib’s most recent album, 2007’s Eardrum, suffered from less critical acclaim than his others, but still brought the hip-hop fire and brimstone “Hostile Gospel Pt. 1 [Deliver Us].”
Talib Kweli is certainly a fascinating pick to play with Passion Pit. (At least Kid Cudi did a song with MGMT and Ratatat.) Perhaps it is a reversal of Jay Z’s indie kid patronage from this summer. Whatever the case, regardless of who he performs with, the Brooklyn MC has more skill than many of his chart-topping peers, minus the Autotune and VMA meltdowns (although Kanye and Talib are longtime collaborators). So after you spend the 20 minutes it takes to sample Passion Pit’s discography (they’re still a young band), spend a few hours getting into Talib Kweli, an MC worth being educated about.