black star

definition, ok their rhymes are shit on this yo stay away from the similes!! but the beat reminds me of silkk the shocker or ragga jungle

brown skin lady, i love this song, ill girl im feelin you jam, singing on the chorus is niiiice beat is smoothness

hater players, ooh look out diddy!! nah i like this song, mos and talib sound hungry and the moog or whatever makes it tight, its well structured

respiration f common, this is where my critical facilities break down, i mean this is corny and pretty and uplifting whatever, totally wonderful, everybody brings poetics that actually work and it feels real

twice inna lifetime, this is my fav rawkus posse cut of all time, i was feelin jane doe on the same tribe song i first heard mos on and she kills this, 'hail mary matter fact hail jane / niggas take my name in vain like i was cocaine', punch and words are good too and the beat has that endless posse cut feel, massive improvement on the original fortified live

i can't think of a single mc who's lived up less to his original promise than mos

lots of the mos def album is good. the 3part brooklyn one, i even like the one where he's singing about shining light on the world

get by grew on me especially the remix. it doesn't snap enough to make me want to dance but it really makes me nod my head real good. the wanna-dance track of the year for me is black eyed peas' "retarded" and some of the bonecrusher has been growing on me and also jay-z's "stop".

I just can't help thinking there's white folks who feel bad about liking music by black folks that doesn't connect with a mass black audience. It's kinda like black folks feeling guilty about liking indie rock, 'cuz it's not as popular with white folks as Tim McGraw. Silliness. Mos might not be a major talent, but he's a minor pleasure, and that's enough for me.

seond i think yr. way off fucking base anyway since yr. needlessly defensive on a thread where ppl all say they LIKE the black star album. (me i have good memories of late night pondering with that song about the city breathing)

and asking what's "conscious" about Mos Def betrays probably a greater ignorance of him, the hip-hop landscape and etc. than evinced by anyone else on this thread. essentially a positive vision of afrocentricity, which black star actually articulated better than anything prior, and even helped create as an idea. (the native tongues tradition seems awful difft. to me) speaking of which the most mos-hate comes from those who thought he "left the underground behind" like q-tip in his foolish attempts at pop hoo-hah. & to be honest mos' rock IS mildly embaressing and his desire to continue persuing it is... odd... to say the least.

honestly i always liked mos' flow more but talib's lyrics always seemed more interesting to me. mos' sound can just make me feel happy and comforted.

YES!this track is just utter sublime...

It's not just this thread, though -- I see a fair amount of dismissive stuff about indie/undie hip-hop on ilm and elsewhere. Some of it's on target, but there's an overall tone to it that never quite escapes white-kids-wanting-to-be-down. There are race and class issues there, and there's something odd about a middle-class educated white audience dismissing the music of middle-class educated black performers because it's not "real" enough. The flipside of this is my white liberal friends who only listen to "conscious" hip-hop and get uncomfortable if someone puts on Jay-Z. And yes, I give them shit too.

I think most of the middle of the Black Star album is pretty weak, and my favorite track might be Astronomy. Definition, Respiration, and Thieves in the Night also really great.

yeah it seems like the white-guy-who-only-likes-conscious-hop is a lot less prevalent than the white-guy-who-only-likes-pop-hop-and-hates-white-guys-who-like-conscious-hop.
WGWOLCH is 9/10 of the way to strawman at this point.

me too.

WGWOLCH is 9/10 of the way to strawman at this point.

Yeah. And yet I've read some reviews of "conscious" stuff that seem to be aimed squarely at that demographic -- "anyone who likes this stuff really needs to listen to some real MCs who can really flow and this music is so boring and clearly people who listen to it can't/don't dance and..."

I guess what bugs me is that from the way some folks talk about it, you'd think Mos Def was delivering monotonal lectures on structural engineering -- when he's actually loose and funny, even on the few overtly topical tracks (like the Johnny Cash/Roseanne Cash riff at the end of "New World Water"). Black Star does sag, and Kweli's 1st solo album sagged so much that I didn't even bother buying the second one. But the 50 Cent album sags too, and so do at least half of Jay-Z's.

Have you heard the remix with Jay-Z and Kanye and Busta and Mos? OH SHIT

I actually kind of agree in retrospect about the bits of the album trife doesn't like (I mean what the hell, mocking beat-jackers on a Slick Rick remake and within a few minutes of a "The P Is Free" 'homage'?!). I haven't listened to much of anything Black Star alumnus-related in ages, though, and I got a bit weary of Black On Both Sides when I thought too much about that whole "nobody judged Woody Allen harshly" political stuff. But Mos' party rhymes and chillout noodlings are pretty fun. Kweli needs hotter beats.

i think both Kweli and Hi-Tek came much harder on the Reflection Eternal album, so this one hasn't interested me much in a long long time. "Respiration" is still great, though, the Pete Rock remix even moreso.