I didn’t really appreciate how good we had it to be able to do that until I started traveling more. It was a natural process of being a rapper in New York City. We’d sit in the lobby and meet interns and runners and assistants of assistants. We’d see the addresses on the back of the albums and see the addresses of the record labels, like, ‘oh that’s on 5 th Avenue’ and we would go there. Because me and my friends, we’d make demo tapes. I can’t overemphasize the influence that New York City has had on my career. On the evolution of his career starting in New York in the ‘90s: It’s like exercise for me.”īefore an interview on WUNC’s “ The State of Things,” Kweli spoke about the artistic process and life as a working-class rapper.
On Twitter you have to be clever and figure out how to make it fit… It trains my brain. “One hundred and forty characters is like two bars. “I thoroughly enjoy it,” said Kweli of the mental sparring. He also discussed his approach to taking on anonymous critics and haters on Twitter, where he maintains an actively political presence.
The restaurant closed for 90 minutes to accommodate the free community event.ĭuring the talks, Kweli, who has released more than a dozen albums over 20 years, shared his insights on the art of music, the evolution of hip hop, his musical family tree (which includes luminaries such as his partner in rhyme Mos Def, aka Yasiin Bey, Puff Daddy, 9 th Wonder, and Q-Tip) and “ The Seven,” his joint project with fellow rapper, Styles P of The Lox. On Friday, “The Beautiful Struggle: Hip-Hop’s Role in the Trump Era,” held at Beyu Caffe in downtown Durham, featured Neal interviewing Kweli about the current political climate and attracted an equally large crowd. Nearly 200 members of the Duke and Durham community attended. He also visited “ The History of Hip Hop,” a class that is open to the public and co-taught by 9th Wonder and Mark Anthony Neal, co-director of the Duke Council on Race and Ethnicity. Later, Kweli visited “The Culture and Politics of Respectability,” a course taught jointly at Duke and Smith College. The residency began with producer/DJ and Duke professor 9 th Wonder interviewing Kweli in front of a standing-room only audience at a lunchtime event, held at the Forum for Scholars & Publics Thursday on Duke’s West Campus. The events were presented as part of Duke Performances’ Hip-Hop Initiative, made possible, in part, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation. Kweli, a Brooklyn-based hip hop legend, who got his start in the underground rap scene and is often labeled a “conscious rapper” for his socially relevant lyrics, participated in two free, public talks, visited two African American Studies classes, and capped off the week with two sold-out performances at Motorco Music Club with opening act Actual Proof. Last week, Talib Kweli, a Grammy Award-winning, politically outspoken rapper, and self-proclaimed “Twitter troll killer,” brought his talent and political insights to a week-long residency sponsored by Duke Performances.