Kweli vs. Kanye

In Kanye's College Dropout outro, "Last Call", Ye says the following about Talib Kweli:

"My relationship with Kweli I think was one of the best ones to ever happen to my career as a rapper. Because, you know, of course later he allowed me to go on tour with him. Man, I love him for that."

That's enough for me to compile a "Favors" segment on them. From Quality to the aforementioned College Dropout to as recent as Ear Drum, this one-time underground duo traded bars. They have extensively more stuff together, but it's all Kweli over Kan beats on albums and unreleased compilations alike, like on "Young Man", "I Try", "What I Seen (Lonely People)", "Get By", "Good to You", and "Momma, Can You Hear Me". But I decided to just link up when they were both vocally on the same joint. You just gotta deal with it. Or utilize Google.

2002
Talib Kweli - Guerilla Monsoon Rap (feat. Black Thought, Pharoahe Monch, & Kanye West)
Talib Kweli - Get By (Remix feat. Mos Def, Jay-Z, Kanye West, & Busta Rhymes)
2004
Kanye West - Get 'Em High (feat. Talib Kweli & Common)
Consequence - Wack N****s (feat. Kanye West, Common, & Talib Kweli)
2005
Kanye West - We Can Make It Better (feat. Talib Kweli, Q-Tip, Common, & Rhymefest)
2007
Talib Kweli - In the Mood (feat. Kanye West & Roy Ayers)

... and do the John Wall.

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Genre

As it stands right now since I sent all my intros, interludes, outros, and production kits to the recycle bin, I got 18,518 songs sitting in the iTunes. And since I'm one of those OCD organizers who gotta have everything straight and accessible, I got each song labeled perfectly appropriately according to my mental categorization. As you can imagine, the rap/hip-hop tag was just simply not gonna work for me to tag as the genre for darn near every joint. So initially I split it up like any reasonable hip hop head would and got my compass on. East Coast, West Coast, Dirty South, Midwest, and Foreign. But that even got too cluttered. For real, Bay Area joints should not be mixed in with So Cal joints. That kinda stuff don't quite mix right. Or at all. And while I could have microcosm-ed the genre's down to boroughs in all honesty, I finally settled for a mixture of state, city, and general region dichotomy. It works. As long as you know where everybody's from of the top or got Wikipedia on your favorites bar. So just because I wanna, here's a list of my top five emcees (where applicable if I care about five whole people) from each of my hip hop genres on my personal overloaded iTunes.

Alabama: Rich Boy
Atlanta: Andre 3000, Cee-Lo, Big Boi, Bobby Ray, Killer Mike
Boston: Termanology, Guru
Canada: Shad, k-os, Drake
Carolina: Phonte, J. Cole, Joe Scudda, Median, Big Pooh
Chicago: Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West, Common, brandUn DeShay, GemStones
Detroit: Royce da 5'9", Eminem, Obie Trice, Elzhi, Big Sean
European:
Houston: Scarface, D.O.C., Chamillionaire, Devin the Dude, Bun B
Kansas: XV
Kentucky: CunninLynguists (group), Nappy Roots (group), Chris Campbell
Los Angeles: 2Pac, The Game, Crooked I, Blu, The KnuX (group)
Maryland: Wale, Sage Francis, Marky, Oddisee
Miami: QuESt, Smitty
Minnesota: P.O.S, Brother Ali, Slug, Young Son
Mississippi: David Banner
New Jersey: Lauryn Hill, Joe Budden, Wyclef Jean, Redman, Serius Jones
New Orleans: Jay Electronica, Lil' Wayne, Curren$y
New York: Rakim, Jay-Z, Charles Hamilton, MF Doom, Pharoahe Monch
Oakland: Lyrics Born, Gift of Gab, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Boots Riley, Lateef
Ohio: KiD CuDi, Ilyas, Donwill, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony (group)
Pennsylvania: Wiz Khalifa
Philadelphia: Black Thought, Jedi Mind Tricks (group), Asher Roth, Beanie Sigel, Freeway
Rhode Island:
Seattle: RA Scion
St. Louis: Wafeek
Tennessee: GRITS (group), Three 6 Mafia, Young Buck
Virginia: Praverb, Tonedeff, Clipse (group), Trey Songz, Skillz

... but do take my word for it.

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Jealousy #1: The Voice

Sometime last year I put together a list on a whim. It was during a heavy hip hop listening binge where I was going through entire discographies of different artists on the daily. I was taking in every aspect of all of my favorite emcees and trying to understand what specifically stood out to make them as unbelievably dope as I thought they were.

Cradle Orchestra - Live Forever (feat. Black Thought)

Fort Minor - Right Now (feat. Black Thought & Styles of Beyond)

The first and easiest distinction I made was that Black Thought's voice was made by God for him to rap. Point blank. As I've come to find out because of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, dude can also carry a tune if he needs to for a hilariously placed cover song to intro some actor/athlete/musician/douche bag. But the slightly gruff, calculatedly lazy, and powerfully stern inflection that he uses to drop knowledge any given day of the week is where it's really at. He could have jumped out solo from The Roots anytime he'd wanted, but he knew his voice was gonna be heard and respected regardless. That's what makes it even more special when he hops on an independent feature. And kills every other rapper's bars in the vicinity. Sure, dude's got wordplay and concepts and smarts and awareness, but it's his voice that throws him in the forefront to me. I'm jealous.

... but do take my word for it.

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New Wale

Who could possibly get most of Slaughterhouse, all of State Property, Talib & Jean, Bun B, Black Thought, and a disposal of singers and other rappers to boot for one project??? An apparently very patient Wale.

Wale -

Back to the Feature

Pretty much anyone who cares about rap was waiting for this one. Will it be the critics' darling like The Mixtape About Nothing? Probably most definitely not. But it's a lot of rap that you need in your collection.

Wale's proved he can push a concept joint like almost none other, but here he just wants to feed the fans a collection of dudes rapping like their lives depend on it. Collabos between writers can only push the product in positive ways. I even like what I hear on this tape from a few rappers I usually don't care too much for. What's crazy is how easily Wale still manages to standout regularly. The host emcee could have gotten lost in the fray of guest appearances on literally every single song, but Wale's rhyming style is so distinctive and enticing that you're practically waiting for him on every track.

Now my one complaint. 9th Wonder. Back when dude was with Little Brother, I thought he could literally do no wrong. Their sound was so defined that I swore and abided by it. It just worked some other kind of perfection to my ears. But on here ... some of the beats feel stale to me. I hope you don't hear it the same, but I can't help it. 9th is renound for having an unbelievable amount of compositions at his disposal, but on this project you can pretty much understand why. Some don't seem to have gotten much individual attention besides some conveyor belt treatment. There's the soul sample and the drums and ... yeah.

But don't let that detract you. If the tape fits your mood, that's the last of your worries. And the MCs shred every bar something unholy. They had to. This is a Wale tape.

... put 'em both together and you got yourself a super spork.

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Classic: No Alibi

So far I've enjoyed the Jimmy Fallon show pretty well. You can tell he's nervous as crap most of the time, but he'll figure out what to do to keep the awkward talk show moments to a minimum sooner or later. But indelibly, The Roots simply kill it. Like brutally.

So in honor of the legendary Roots crew, I'll post their classic "No Alibi". Off Illadelph Halflife, it just showcases Black Thought's effortless flow over any sound ever.

The Roots - No Alibi

"So if you seen or you heard it, maybe probably I did it. Maybe or maybe not, I admit what I committed. Exhibit the truth because I'm livin proof why, I have no disguise. Ain't no alibi."

They're honestly hip hop's only legitimate band, and even if another one came out, I highly doubt they could compete. While a solo album is supposed to be in the works for Tariq, he's one of the only real emcees who ever stayed straight loyal to be part of a collective and not capitalize strictly on himself. And he definitely could have done that at anytime. Think Joe Johnson/Shawn Marion all being perfectly content in their systems instead of whining to be solo stars. Kinda.

... put 'em both together and you got yourself a super spork.

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