Blackstar

Forget what the doubters are saying, '98 was the year for hip-hop. As other forms of popular music faded further from relevance, Goodie Mob and Outkast erased any reservations on raps new capital-ATLanta, Lauryn Hill dropped Miseducation on the masses, and the gender line will never regain its grip on the biz, A Tribe Called Quest bid farewell and let us know they did it all for the love.

But with the loss of a guiding light, on this last run around the sun, heads had to wonder who would hold up the constellations, when the Questers, Q-Tip and Phife Daug could no longer shine. And then a Black Star was born. Mos Def and Talib Kweli brought the abstract intellect to the next level. The comparisons stop there.

Where Tip and Phife's laidback humor and Siamese twin rapport gave literal meaning to the term wordplay, Mos and Kwa bring a chemistry that's nitro on the mic. Mos Def's hyper-extended flow on "Re: Definition" is probably the most intense unbroken lyrical assault of the year. Dropping rhymes at the speed of these times, his quickness never overshadows his sense of experimentation, as many notes in his throat as hues in a Van Gogh brush stroke. Kweli's smooth, bright-toned deliveries get the yang with the yin.

With intellectual mentors from Marcus Garvey to Mumia Abu-Jamal, and giving props to musical influences from John Coltrane, to Slick Rick, to Nina Simone, Black Star is the next step in the maturation of hip-hop. Kweli confronts the conformity that pumps out lyrically identical, and ideologically hollow rap albums by the dozen on "K.O.S. (Determination),"

"all my people where you at /
cause y'all ain't here /
and your hero's using your mind /
as a canvas to paint fear /
with broad brush strokes /
and tales of incarceration,"

and breaks down the buzzword discriminately applied to any emcee who refuses to play the rap-by-numbers game on "Hater Players,"

"you running your mouth /
don't really know what you be talking 'bout / you should retire /
get that complimentary watch and be out."

"Brown Skin Lady" comes off as a genuine gesture of respect, as the rest of the album stays away from the misogyny so prevalent in standard hip-hop. As Mos puts it, "It may sound corny but whatever . . . I be corny before I'm ignorant." Perhaps in an attempt to compensate for all the bullshit in their other songs, plenty of so-called harder rappers have thrown a far cornier ballad into the mix.

Chi-town natives will dig a politically on-time cameo by the always ingenious Common on "Respiration,"

"out of the city /
they want us gone /
tearing down the jects /
creating plush homes /
my circumstance is between /
Cabrini and Love Jones /
surrounded by hate /
yet I love home."

With a production line-up including DJ Hi-Tek, Mr. Walt from the Beatminerz crew, Shawn J. Period, Geology, and 88-keys, the beats are uniformly fat, but the sounds are as divergent as the lyrics, from the eerie violin sounds on "RE: Definition" to the breezy guitar on "Brown Skin Lady."

Even the more forgettable cuts on the album (of which there are two at the most) are testaments to the duos willingness to experiment, not to be mere pedestals of relative wackness for two or three radio hits to stand on. The new voices of the underground are here. Looking for something that will take you beyond commercial fluff a la Puffy or keepin' it real in the Master P sense of the phrase? Take the Black Star line.

Reviewed by Mike Zimny
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