★★★★★
I remember coming across Talib Kweli's solo debut, Quality and thinking to myself that I had finally found a rapper that didn't care about making $1,000,000 and going platinum every day. Kweli just wanted to make music that worked. Music that worked extremely well. And that's what Quality had going for him. Nobody cared about the fact that it didn't win him a single Grammy nomination, or that it failed to make the top 20 in the Billboard 200...
- www.popmatters.com
2014-04-17
★★★★★
With his first album of 2013, May's Prisoner Of Conscious , Talib Kweli indecisively attempted to reconcile his place in the hip-hop zeitgeist--a tall order considering that Kweli's dense webs of internal rhymes and street-level social activism exists in a world where Rich Homie Quan's "Type Of Way" inches ever closer to 22 million YouTube views...
- www.avclub.com
2013-12-17
★★★★★
Talib Kweli is on his way to finishing up 2013 strong. Taking matters into his own hands, the release of his second album Gravitas is distributed directly from the rapper to the masses. Production credits include J Dilla (RIP), Statik Selektah, Oh No, Lord Quest and others. In the vain of consistency, Talib shows how to stand on your own two and never bow down to something that goes against for what you stand for...
- allhiphop.com
2013-12-18
★★★★★
Talib Kweli never quite crossed over, and he seems to have made peace with that. The New York underground king and one half of Black Star has always accrued respect and love from backpackers, but seemed out of place on major labels. On his sixth solo album and second independent release, , the rapper finds a comfortable groove in his sound and message. The album is a quick corrective after the more crossover-oriented earlier in 2013. The pairing of bluesman Gary Clark Jr. and Big K.R.I.T...
- exclaim.ca
2014-01-14
★★★★★
Talib Kweli - "Hamster Wheel" The title works, but not the way you think. If something is holding back Talib Kweli, one of the technically better rappers of the last however many presidential administrations - and, per the album's baseline mediocrity, something certainly seems to be - it's not the stigma of being yoked to conscious rap...
- dustedmagazine.com
2013-08-09
★★★★★
At one point in my life, Talib Kweli was my favorite rapper. That was 2004 - after catching up with all of his releases from "Black Star" to "Quality" and before I heard the first misstep of his career "The Beautiful Struggle." Since then I've still had a great appreciation for Kweli and loved some of his out put (most notably "Ear Drum" and "Liberation"), but have found myself becoming less fascinated with the Brooklyn-based emcee...
- rapreviews.com
2013-06-18
★★★★★
Talib Kweli's new LP Prisoner of Conscious opens with him speaking to an Occupy Wall Street crowd, or a simulation of the same, and ends with him declaring, "Free Pussy Riot". That's on "It Only Gets Better", the last song before a bonus track. Before mentioning Pussy Riot he runs through a litany of political prisoners, alive or departed, and frames the album title as an expression of support for them: "Prisoner of conscious / whenever life gets you down / think about those freedom fighters /...
- www.popmatters.com
2013-05-18
★★★★★
While Kweli is still both introspective and current at times, "Prisoner Of Conscious" is ultimately too formulaic to be considered as a superior album. Talib Kweli has gained and maintained steady popularity in part due to his being labeled a "conscious rapper" or for making thought-provoking Hip Hop...
- www.hiphopdx.com
2013-05-11
★★★★★
Veteran emcee Talib Kweli has finally released his long-delayed fifth studio album, Prisoner of Conscious.
The LP, released through Javotti Media/3D, features previously-released singles "Push Thru" and "Upper Echelon," "Come Here," "High Life" and "Rocket Ships." Joining Kweli on the set are notable guest features Busta Rhymes, Curren$y, Kendrick Lamar, Marsha Ambrosius, Melanie Fiona, Miguel and Nelly, while production credits go to Harry Fraud, Oh No, S1 and more...
- www.djbooth.net
2013-05-09
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