(Koch Records)

3.5/5 Stars



Talib Kweli used to be inextricably linked with the NYC vibe of a Brooklyn block party, the backpacker haven Rawkus Records, the warm, thick voice of his old partner Mos Def, and the coolly meditative guitars and pianos DJ Hi-Tek brought to all his productions.

But now, Rawkus is gone, the New York hip-hop scene is in hibernation, the old Mos Def is AWOL (lost to Hollywood and bad concept albums), and Hi-Tek produces worthless album tracks for G-Unit and 213.

Since 2004’s crossover flop “The Beautiful Struggle,” Talib has been more likely to show up on wax with a motley assortment of marginally “conscious” hip-hop, accompanied by cheap drums, whiny trumpets, and Ruff Ryder synths.

While his new rush-released album, “Right About Now: The Official Sucka Free Mix CD,” unfortunately maintains this holding pattern of mediocre beats (with the exception of the tribal drum Kanye-esque meta-rap of the title track), it is not as unlistenable as “Struggle”; at times Kweli’s ’97-’98 brilliance shines through.

Talib is recuperating here, showing his audience that his career is not restricted to hip-hop-lite collaborations with Mary J. Blige (instead bringing in underground heavyweights MF Doom and Jean Grae for this album), and that he can still spit like no other.

The album’s mixtape aesthetic and lack of a radio single means one of two things. Either Kweli is trying to return to his days of underground credibility, and doesn’t want to appeal to the masses (considering the double-pyrite sales of the album so far, he’s succeeding), or he’s callously trying to cash in on the indie hip-hop market’s current profitability.

Regardless, the 50-minute album should be judged on its own terms. Doing so reveals some embarrassing missteps. On the painful “Ms. Hill,” Kweli recounts the entire story of the Fugees’ breakup, and Lauryn Hill’s subsequent rise to solo success and quick fall from the spotlight, in tabloid-worthy detail. While the story is interesting enough, and the nostalgic beat is appropriately soulful, no one ever asked the emcee for “Behind the Music: Eccentric Alt-Rap Songwriter Edition.” We asked for hip-hop.

He delivers on this tacit demand with such future classics as “Rock On.” “I show pain in the manner/of Coltrane’s ‘Alabama’/Make ’em blaze they hammer/Real girls get down on the flo’ like David Banner/When I handle/my shit, I go bananas/Man, you walking where the animals live!”

That’s just five seconds of hotness within a blazing three minutes and nineteen seconds of pure fire. This is the head-twisting, double-time yet lyrically substantial spitting that makes the Twistas and Drag-Ons of mainstream hip-hop so redundant.

But Kweli can’t always pull it off. One of the most interesting things about Black Star was that he and Mos took the aesthetic of old-school rap and made it sound fresh and new. Not so on this album’s ill-fated “reunion” cut “Supreme Supreme,” which only succeeds in reminding the listener that the members of the once “best alliance in hip hop” have lost their old-school sensibilities even as they gained album sales.

The worst part is that Talib’s lyrics are still there, but he refuses to refine his production or songwriting. “Drugs, Basketball, & Rap” falls prey to the same fate as the “message” tracks on “The Beautiful Struggle.” Instead of sensitively presenting the listener with his profound thoughts, he panders to pop convention with trite choruses and aluminum beats.

Talib adopts enough contradictory guises on this album to make a schizophrenic blush. “The Beast,” “Who Got It,” and “Roll Off Me” attempt to roll up the message of KRS-ONE’s Boogie Down Productions, the swagger of Big Daddy Kane, and the aggression of every other New York rapper before him into a cohesive package, but he can’t have it all three ways.

He tries everything at once; gone is the sensitive, astute commentator of his first two albums, replaced with a half-assed attempt at G-Unit-style menace. Or maybe it’s just a half-assed attempt at singing all his hooks, a la 50 Cent. Either way, it’s a misstep.

Those of us who were spellbound by “Thieves in the Night” or “Africa Dream” didn’t care that he wasn’t the hardest rapper out there. If that was what we cared about, we’d go buy Juelz Santana’s album instead of this one.

Clearly he’s not trying for the peaks of “Reflection Eternal” or “Black Star”; “Right About Now” isn’t even a cohesive artistic statement, just a slapdash showcase for his rhyming skill and underground contacts. Were it not for those classics, Kweli would probably be only vaguely remembered as a fence-straddling quasi-backpacker.