TALIB, TORNADOES AND GUTTER RAINBOWS

“IF SKILLS sold truth be told, I’d probably be, lyrically Talib Kweli,” so sang Jay-Z in his 2003 album track Moment of Clarity.
It’s a line that haunts rapper Talib Kweli, a sign of the high regard he holds with the hip-hop fraternity, who covet this wordsmith’s tongue.

But Talib, widely seen as one of America’s greatest hip-hop lyricists, doesn’t mind. In fact, he says: “I take it as a huge compliment. Don’t be fooled I’ve dumbed down lyrics before. I just haven’t done it at the level Jay-Z has. I’ve songs where I’m having fun, playing around and I like those songs. Sometimes that works but I haven’t made a career out of it like Jay-Z.”

Talib plays Lyrical Alliance at the Roundhouse (Saturday), joining leading Arab hip hop artists –Algeria’s Rabah Ourrad, British Palestinian MC Shadia Mansour, dubbed the first lady of Arabic hip-hop, Palestinian Israeli Tamer Nafar who sings in Arabic, Hebrew and English, Lebanon’s Rayess Bek and VJ Jana Saleh and Jordanian rapper Samm.

It’s a night where the Middle East meets West and Arab hip-hop takes centre stage.

So where does Talib fit in? Not so naturally he admits “I’ve never heard Arab hip hop or been to a country where the language is Arabic”, adding: “I’m definitely excited about doing something different and possibly learning more about hip-hop in another language.”
Although artists like Mansour are particularly political, Talib’s not picking sides.
He said: “(Palestine and Israel) need to work harder at getting along and hitting extremists who too often misrepresent what rational sane people think. I don’t think extremism on any side is warranted. But I also recognise we live in a world where the struggle of the Palestinians is under-represented in my view. I believe in fairness, balance and clarity so anything that brings eyes to that I’m down with it.”
The oppressed have always adapted to hip-hop says Talib, adding: “Hip hop is folk music not in the sense of soft focus, it speaks the language of people at the time when they are still speaking it. A lot of music speaks a language from years back...hip hop often speaks the language of the reality existing right now.”

Album Gutter Rainbows, his childhood name for puddle oil slicks, a phenomenon he recently discovered immortalised as gasoline rainbows in classic novel Catcher in the Rye, is out in November.

He said: “When the rain and dirt mix together, it forms a little rainbow. When I was a little kid not knowing it was from oil and pollution I was just thinking wow that’s nice. You know when you live in a city and there’s a heavy wind and the wind tunnels through the buildings and forms these little rainstorms, these little tiny tornadoes, you can see the leaves sort of dancing? That’s like an inner city tornado. There’s things in the city that are nature that happen because of man made things, buildings, pollution, but somehow nature seems to find a way to give us rainbows, tornadoes.”