Rapper and acti-vist Talib Kweli addressed an audience at CCBC Dundalk on Sept. 16 several hours before performing at a Baltimore club.    photo by  Roland Dorsey

Kweli uses music to spread ideas

by Heather Perlberg

Brooklyn-born rapper and activist Talib Kweli took the stage at CCBC Dundalk on Sept. 16 to speak about his career and offer advice on how to make positive changes in life.
    Kweli began his career in the late 1990s by putting out an album with rapper Mos Def and has since made several other CDs.
    The son of college professors, Kweli described his upbringing as different from some other well-known rap artists and acknowledged that he is often referred to as “an academic rapper” or “conscious rapper.”
    “I really appreciate the exchange of ideas and energy,” Kweli said. “I think it’s a myth that all rappers come from destitute situations.”
    Though he said the area of Park Slope where he grew up has become gentrified over the years, Kweli called it “the closest thing to a multicultural neighborhood I have ever seen,” adding that his family and New York City are his chief influences for writing music. 
    “I ended up falling in love with hip-hop in part because I grew up in New York City,” Kweli said.
    When he started spending more time in Washington Square Park and less time in school, Kweli’s parents sent him to boarding school.
    He joked that he thought drugs were prevalent in the hood before he got to Cheshire Academy in Connecticut.
    “Until you go to boarding school, you haven’t seen real drug use,” Kweli said.
    At Cheshire, the Brooklyn native got into theater, played baseball and gave campus tours.
    “I like baseball,” he said.  “You spend a lot of time thinking about your next move.”
    After getting caught for selling marijuana, Kweli said he thought his days at the academy, which had a no-tolerance policy, were through.
    But Kweli told a full audience in the K Building theater on the Dundalk Campus that the headmaster gave him another chance because he was one of few African-American students to attend the school and excelled athletically and academically, and the school needed what he represented.
    The rapper began studying experimental theater at New York University and eventually dropped out. He worked at Nkiru, Brooklyn's oldest black-owned bookstore, for many years, and later bought it with Mos Def before converting it to the Nkiru Center for Education and Culture.
    “The idea that you could go to college and get a good job is a myth,” said Kweli, addressing the CCBC students in the crowd. “If you don’t know why you are in college, you need to figure it out.”
    Kweli said he has become an activist because music has given him a platform to express things about his community.
    “You need to be good at what you do. ... The reason that I have this platform is because I concentrate on my craft,” he said. “I’m dope with the raps. If we are not relevant as artists, then we can’t be effective.”
    In the song “Beautiful Struggle,” Kweli’s lyrics touch on politics, war and slavery:   
    All that folks want is safety, they goin' gun crazy,
    The same reason Reagan was playin' war games in the '80s,
    The same reason I've always rocked dog chains on my babies
    The struggle is beautiful, I'm too strong for your slavery...
    The rapper performed with Mos Def at Sonar to an audience of over 1,100 in Baltimore later that night, according to a club employee.
    “Hip-hop is sociology and poetry put to music,” Kweli said at the Dundalk Campus. “It’s the best and maybe the last vehicle for expression for our community. It’s about being original.”
   
For more information on Talib Kweli or his music, see the Web site www.talibkweli.com.