Talib Kweli

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Talib "Kweli" Greene (born October 3, 1975 in Brooklyn , New York ) is an American rapper who is counted among the representatives of Conscious Rap .

Life

Talib Kweli was born in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York in 1975. His family valued their African cultural roots. The name Talib comes from Arabic and means “student”, Kweli is the Kiswahili word for “true”, “really” or “genuine”.

His interest in language and its forms of expression began early in school: he read a lot and wrote short stories. He later studied experimental theater at New York University . There he met a kindred spirit named Dante Smith, later known as Mos Def . He shared a love of hip-hop with him . Together they also took over Nkiru, one of the oldest African-American bookstores in Brooklyn, and converted it into the Nkiru Center for Education and Culture . Kweli is the father of two children. Kweli is a supporter of the religious movement The Nation of Gods and Earths . He supports the BDS campaign and in June 2019 refused to distance himself from the campaign at the request of the Open Source Festival in Düsseldorf. He declared that "he would like to perform in Germany, but would not change his stance", whereupon he was dismissed from the festival "because of his support for the controversial Israeli-critical BDS campaign".

Musical career

Talib Kweli had his first appearances on released phonograms in 1997 on the album Doom by the hip-hop crew Mood, produced by Hi-Tek .

In 1998, Mos Def and Kweli released an album as Black Star . The name they gave the album and themselves as a duo refers to the first shipping line from the United States to Africa that belonged to a black man. The album was released through Rawkus and was partly responsible for the rise and good reputation of the then young independent label .

on fire escape behind Rawkus Records NYC 1999

This was followed by the album Train of Thought , on which Talib Kweli collaborated with Hi-Tek under the pseudonym Reflection Eternal . After that, Kweli released several solo albums on which he worked with different producers. Namely so far the LPs Quality , Beautiful Struggle and Eardrum .

A few months before the official release of Beautiful Struggle , a bootleg was circulating on the Internet containing unfinished versions of many of the songs originally intended for the planned album. As a result, Kweli was forced to record some new songs for the LP and postpone the release. Some of the tracks on the bootleg that didn't make it onto the final album were released on the mixtapes The Beautiful Mixtape and Right About Now .

Beautiful Struggle marked Kweli's last collaboration with Rawkus. He then worked with the record company Geffen Records . Since 2006, the rapper released on his own label Blacksmith Records that with the major label Warner Bros. cooperates. On February 18, 2007 , Kweli appeared as a musical guest on an aftershow by Prince .

Talib Kweli at the Out4Fame Festival 2015

Discography

Albums

year title Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements
(Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes) 		Remarks
CH CH UK UK US US
2000 Reflection Eternal - - US17 (21 weeks)
US
Talib Kweli & Hi-Tek
2002 Quality - - US21st
gold
gold

(29 weeks)US
2004 The Beautiful Struggle CH75 (2 weeks)
CH 		- US14 (10 weeks)
US
Talib Kweli & Hi-Tek
2005 Right About Now: The Official Sucka Free Mix CD - - US113 (1 week)
US
Mixtape
2007 Eardrum CH34 (3 weeks)
CH 		UK82 (1 week)
UK 		US2 (10 weeks)
US
2010 Revolutions per minute - - US18 (1 week)
US
with Hi-Tek as Reflection Eternal
2011 Gutter Rainbows CH86 (1 week)
CH 		- US29 (1 week)
US
2014 Gravitas - - US114 (1 week)
US
2017 The Seven - - US195 (1 week)
US
EP
Talib Kweli & Styles P

More albums

Mix tapes

  • 2002: Top Kwelity Classics Vol. 1
  • 2004: The Beautiful Mix CD
  • 2005: The Beautiful Mixtape Vol. 2: The Struggle Continues
  • 2006: Brooklyn, Tennessee
  • 2006: Kweli: Confidential
  • 2006: Blacksmith: The Movement
  • 2007: Get Familiar (with Clinton Sparks )
  • 2007: Focus
  • 2008: The MCEO Mixtape
  • 2008: Reflections of the Coolest (with Lupe Fiasco )
  • 2010: The RE: Union (with Hi-Tek as Reflection Eternal & Statik Selektah )
  • 2012: We Run This Vol. 7 (with Mr. E of RPS Fam )
  • 2015: Fuck the Money

Singles

year title Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements
(Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes) 		Remarks
CH CH UK UK US US
1998 definition - - US60 (10 weeks)
US
Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star
2003 Get By - - US77 (10 weeks)
US
2004 I try - UK59 (2 weeks)
UK 		-
2006 old school - UK84 (1 week)
UK 		-
Dangerdoom feat. Talib Kweli

swell

  1. ↑ - ( Memento of the original from April 24, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nyc.gov
  2. ↑ Festival invites US rapper Talib Kweli , deutschlandfunkkultur.de, published and accessed on June 5, 2019
  3. ↑ http://www.laut.de/lautstark/cd-reviews/k/kweli_talib/the_beautiful_struggle/index.htm
  4. ↑ - ( Memento of the original from December 2, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.pooltrax.com
  5. ↑ a b Chart sources: CH UK US
  6. ↑ Music Sales Awards: US

Web links

Commons : Talib Kweli  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Kweli, Talib
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Greene, Talib
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-American rapper
DATE OF BIRTH 3rd October 1975
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York , USA