Warner Bros / Wea
2007
Eardrum (Explicit)
About This Album
Although the most salient attribute of hip-hop is the words, the production behind it is equally important. It turns rhymes into song, into something you can feel, something that moves you. And while Talib Kweli certainly has the lyrical aspect down, often his albums -- and to be fair, those of other so-called "conscious MCs" -- tend to suffer from a dearth of good beats. Of course there are still decent tracks, great tracks even, but there's also a lot of filler-sounding material, warm and slow and utterly boring, that deadens the overall flow and power of the album and twists Kweli's powerful vocals into dripping preachiness that lacks oomph behind the pretension and self-indulgence. This same affliction besets Eardrum, the MC's first release on his own Blacksmith label, which, despite its wide selection of producers -- Kanye West, will.i.am, Pete Rock, Just Blaze, Madlib, and Hi-Tek, to name some -- never quite seems to take off, to claim the beat and make it its, and Kweli's, own. The most egregious example of this is in the Afrika Bambaataa-alluding "The Perfect Beat," which sports the worst production on the entire record, simple and cheap-sounding, KRS-One's tired rhymes not helping matters.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,4,5,8,9,10,12,13,16,18,19 and 20)

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