Day: January 10, 2013

In the 15 years since Talib Kweli and Yasiin Bey (then Mos Def) released their hip-hop breakthrough together under the name Black Star, the MCs have each issued an abundance of music while maintaining only spurts of progress on material as a duo. Despite the occasional late-night TV performance and their set at last year’s Bonnaroo, fans should not expect the follow-up album to Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star this year, Kweli tells Rolling Stone, due to his and Bey’s devotion to individual projects. Meanwhile, with almost a dozen solo and collaborative albums to his credit, Kweli will release Prisoner of Conscious on April 23rd. He tells Rolling Stone the title reflects his attempt to shed, or at least redefine, the “socially conscious rapper” label pinned to him since the Nineties. Talib Kweli Performs ‘Cold Rain’ on ‘Colbert’ “At the center of being socially conscious is your community – it’s where you come from, what type of person that it made you, and how you give back to that. And it’s a cycle,” he said in a phone interview. “With me it’s like, ‘Oh, he’s a great lyricist,’ but they don’t focus on the music. I think it’s because of how I’ve been sold and how I’ve been marketed as some sort of poster boy for underground rap.” Kweli now controls that branding as an independent artist, and he will release music, including an album from his Reflection Eternal partner Hi-Tek, through Javotti, his own label. Four