Kweli Vs. Beethoven: What Does Jazz Really Mean In Rap?

After having dealt with how jazz has influenced rap in a general sense, I’ll now mention the specific, strictly musical aspects that these two types of music definitively do share.

The first is something known as “playing behind the beat.” This means that a musician plays their notes slightly later than the actual felt beat of the music. It is a very small delay, though, so it doesn’t feel like a shorter duration length of note. Instead, it’s simply expressive. In rap, you have to have a very discerning ear to hear it, but a pretty clear example is Mos Def’s verse on “RE: Definition:”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr6SrRQnZv4

The most obvious one is at 2:10, on the “-ssem-“ syllable of “assemble it.” That syllable “-ssem-“ is still accented heavily, and it feelslike it’s on the beat, not syncopated like the word “did” back in his line “Like Moby Dick did Ahab.” But he’s actually way after it, to an almost startling extent.

This expressive delay also happens at 1:52, on the “sti” of “Palestinians”; The word “day”, at 2:00; The “syn” of “synonym” and the “fem” of “feminine”; and even others.

Compare this to a video of Miles Davis’ solo on “Freddie Freeloader”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14zAa_PBfRI

It has the notated music in the video. But, actually, that sheet music (note that it is Western music notation) is all wrong. Those notes that are written down don’t actually fall on the beat, as the notes indicate; they fall way after, as you can hear.

This is something African drumming music, and jazz, does a lot as well.

Another thing people will compare between rap and jazz or African drumming music is “polyrhythms.” But, just like jazz is being used to justify rap, “polyrhythms” isn’t really the right word, if they want to make the comparison such a commentator thinks they’re making. Polyrhythms is when more than one rhythm is being played at the same time, and since a rapper can only say one note (or word) at a time, it’s hard to see how they could ever make polyrhythms.

Instead, what I really think such commentators are alluding to is the fact that rappers can touch on many different metric divisions of the beat, all in a short span of time.

For instance, a polyrhythm, such as that from Western African drumming music, might be one where 1 drummer plays 3 notes in the same time duration during which another drummer plays 2 notes. This is what that sounds like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8tKbd91kFA

And if rappers are using polyrhythms, they could, at most, only be switching between alluding to that level of 2 notes at a time, and alluding to that level of 3 notes at a time. But again, I’d maintain this isn’t a polyrhythm, but complex rhythmic subdivisions of the beat, since the rapper is only saying one note at a time. That is, they aren’t thinking bottom up (add 3 notes together, then 2 notes, etc.); they are thinking top down (divide the beat/bar however I want.) This doesn’t reflect how the rapper is consciously thinking at the time they are making their rap, but the different musical traditions they are working with (classical, which would be bottom up, vs. jazz/African traditions, which is top down.)

At a much more complex level, this is what Kweli is doing in that same notation from “RE: DEFinition” that we looked at last week. As a reminder, this is it:






You can hear that song here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr6SrRQnZv4

To help you understand those rhythms, I've isolated them and had them played back by a simple triangle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DICLoafxSag

For a while I have been notating rap rhythms exactly as they sound — behind the beat, all of these complex rhythmic subdivisions — while other people simplify them. When you simplify them into straight notes, you lose much of what I’m talking about: rapping behind the beat, displaced accents, complex subdivisions. But if you look at that notation from Kweli, you will see all of it. In order to see the complex subdivisions I’ve just been talking about, compare how many different note lengths there are. Sometimes this, (called a sixteenth note), as on the first instance of the word “is”:



Sometimes there is this other length of a note (called a dotted sixteenth note), as on the word “so”:



Sometimes there is still different length, that of the dotted 32nd note:

And still others. Again, you don’t need to be able to read music to get this; just see how many different note lengths there are, and how quickly Kweli changes between all of them. Compare this now to a zenith of Western music, the “Ode To Joy” melody from the final movement of Beethoven’s 9th’s symphony. This is the first 3 bars:

Unlike Kweli’s music, here, there is 1 length of notes: a quarter note. This is a great, physical example of the difference between Western music and African-influenced musics (like jazz or the blues.)

Javotti Media - The Cathedral Album Review

Talib Kweli has a deep history of working with strong talent in its early stages before he or she has achieved huge popularity; Kanye West’s 3 beats on Kweli’s 2002 effort Quality come to mind most immediately. With that kind of credibility, any album Kweli co-signs, such as label Javotti Media’s new project The Cathedral, deserves a look. While it’s never easy to identify a superstar before they’re born, the undiscovered star of this show is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the very one that Kweli himself decided to release an album with a few years ago under the homonymic moniker Idle Warship.

That musician is singer Res, a budding star who shines on the 14^th track of The Cathedral, entitled “For Who You Are,” which reminds the listener of an old jazz standard in the best possible way. The comparisons that this Philly vocalist is sure to draw to Lauryn Hill circa The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, or Aretha Franklin in her prime, makes a listener wonder why this track was placed towards the end of the album. The fact that there is no conventional rapping on this song speaks to the more general fact that there is something here for everyone, no matter their favorite rap subgenre.

 “Purest Heart” is almost a chopped and screwed beat from Texas, with its unintelligible vocal samples, spastic hi-hats, layered snare slaps, and double-time tempo. “Manifest Destiny” has a 90s Atlanta-esque groove that’s supported by truly funky horns before an extreme bebop brass solo takes over. A classic rap stoner track, “Roll Me Up,” recalls the slower kind of Dr. Dre G-funk with its expansive keyboards. “Doc Shebeleza Remix” even features a textbook Memphis triplet flow from Cassper Nyovest. This perhaps isn’t surprising when the diverse geographical origins of this crew are recognized: Cory Mo was born in Houston, while débutante Res comes from Philadelphia originally.

But these references to larger musical currents in mainstream Hip Hop are always bolstered by a willingness to embrace the eclectic. “Hypnotized Snakes,” from NIKO IS, makes use of an Middle Eastern music vocal sample that somehow works perfectly with the Latin percussion behind it. These musicians also consistently show a willingness to think beyond just hooks and choruses. There are multiple instrumental interludes, such as on the aforementioned “Manifest Destiny.” Meanwhile, K-Valentine’s “Chiraq” is a singeing, searing freestyle that clocks in at almost two-and-a-half minutes. “What’s Real (Live)” has an extended dynamic crescendo at the end.

This compilation isn’t the Boss Yo Life Up Gang album of 2013, whose spotlight shown on established artists Young Jeezy and YG. The Cathedral conversely mixes in a number of appearances from more established talent who will draw in a larger public to hear their lesser known brethren. Appearances from Pharoahe Monch, Big K.R.I.T., and the album anchor, Kweli, should be enough to grab many mainstream underground listeners. Kweli himself leads the way on the first track, setting the tone for the originality found on the rest of the album by using a wide-ranging, affected delivery that one doesn’t hear very often from him. The long block rhymes are still there, however; “foolishness” flipped with “pugilist” are classic Kweli.

If The Cathedral doesn’t make use of old school sounds as much as one might expect, directed as it is by an experienced NYC rapper, then it makes use of an old school aesthetic. That’s a holistic, comprehensive artistic approach. For example, before Nas’ Illmatic in 1994, most production for an album was handled all by the same producer, as by Eric B. for Rakim on Paid In Full in 1987. There are no breaks for silence, even for a second, between each track on The Cathedral, and each track’s own beat frequently bleeds into the next. Even the host of the album, Affion Crockett, is a throwback to the original meaning of a rapper’s initials: MC. Affion is more a master of ceremonies than someone who just introduces and ends each song with ad libs, instead acting as a comedian who commentates on all of the album’s action as a fully integrated player. Throw in quotes or samples of Nas, Wu-Tang Clan, 50 Cent, Kendrick Lamar, and Fleetwood Mac, and these artists’ musical consciousness turns out to be strongly unified.

Overall, the refreshingly large ambition of this musically kaleidoscopic album results in something that is greater than the sum of its parts. With so many versatile sounds from so many different artists that all work together as one, prospective listeners would do well to keep an eye (and an ear) out for these artists’ upcoming solo projects.

Talib Kweli Interview

Below is the interview I just conducted with Talib Kweli. I asked him a lot of the same questions that I asked Jean Grae here and Pharoahe Monch here. It’ll be helpful to aspiring rappers, big hip hop fans, and new fans too. I ask him how he writes his rhymes, what advice he can give to starting rappers, and more. Enjoy!

Composer’s Corner: You grew up in a household with some professors in it. For instance, your mom is an English professor at Medgar Evers College, and your dad was an administrator at Adelphi University. What is your formal education history of music like? Have you ever taken piano lessons or anything like that?

Talib Kweli: I think I played a recorder in junior high school. At one point for like a month I took guitar lessons from a kid in my high school. I didn’t really learn shit though. Then there was a movie a couple years ago that never got made but that I got a part for. I played a drummer. I took about 4 months of drum lessons to make it look it real.

Composer’s Corner: It sounds like none of these impacted the rapper and musician you are today because those experiences were scattershot.

Talib Kweli: Those things were just things I tried. I can’t say I learned a whole lot. If anything what I know musically from rapping I probably brought to those things more than the other way around.

Composer’s Corner: Did you have anyone in particular who helped you learn the basics of rap, saying, “This is how you count beats, this is how you count bars,” stuff like that?

Talib Kweli: I approach music from a very intellectual standpoint. I’m not saying that to brag. I’m just saying I don’t feel like I’m necessarily as naturally talented at it as some of my favorite musicians. I think that’s what the interesting about Black Star always was, with Mos Def. I can write really well. But Mos Def is more organic. Even in the way we recorded. When we were recording with Black Star, I’d have to take the beat and listen to it for a while, for a couple weeks, before I was like, “Okay, I’m ready.” And then write it down on the paper. Mos would just hear it and start saying things.

Composer’s Corner: What is your compositional process? You were getting into it a little bit. You always have the beat first and you listen to it for a while before you know what you want to do?

Talib Kweli: That was back then, and I’ve evolved and changed and tried different things over the years. When I first started listening to Hip Hop, I didn’t really listen in an investing way to Hip Hop until like 1987, 1988. Groqwing up in New York you hear it. I knew Run-D.M.C. and Beastie Boys, but I didn’t really listen to Hip Hop. When I got to junior high school is when I started listening to Hip Hop, because that’s what all the kids were listening to. As soon as I started listening to it I started writing my own rhymes and I’d give them to kids in my neighborhood who were already rappers. I was already writing plays and poetry. I was definitely a gifted writer when I was young, so the writing was there. But it was the musicality of it that I had to come to learn. So when I first started rapping, when I gained the confidence to rap under my own name, what I would do is I’d have composition notebooks full of rhymes. Just full of rhymes. And when I started meeting producers as a teenager, and going into studios for the first time, I would try to say these rhymes to established beats. And I think that’s where my style developed from. To say rhymes that were already written with a syncopation in my head or written with a rhythm in my head and try to fit them to different beats. And over the years I’ve really gotten out of that habit and I’ve developed a habit where I want to hear the beat and the rhymes come directly out of the beat. As soon as I hear a beat, rhyme s start popping into my head, and I’m like, “Okay, I like that beat.”

Composer’s Corner: Yours is the first case of a rapper I’ve talked to who said that they write the rhymes first, and then get the beat. And you think that’s where your style developed from? Because some of the rhythms you use are so crazy, and no other rapper is out there doing the same thing. You fit 5 syllables to a beat, or sometimes 6 to a beat.

Talib Kweli: That’s exactly it./ That’s exactly the inspiration. I had all these rhymes that were written a certain way. And then I would hear beats I would like, and I would literally try to fit them. You hear that and you read that as a severe criticism. You’re talking about it as something that’s interesting musically and I appreciate that. That’s something that’s been said about my style that people have said that they love and people say that they loathe. And for me, I’m glad that I learned that way. It makes my style unique. I feel like that’s what makes my style unique. I take comfort in something that Bob Dylan once said. He was like, ”When I go to a concert, I’m not going to sing along, or I’m not going because I can do what the artist on stage can do. I’m going to see them do something I can’t do. So when I go, I want to watch a virtuoso performance, per se.” And when he said that, it struck me. I was like, “Okay, that’s where I’m at artistically.” So while I still make music these days where I go in and out of that style, so sometimes I stay more static and rap to the beat when I’m really trying to get a point across. And then I go back into that. As opposed to earlier in my career, it was always like that, because I didn’t have any beats.

Composer’s Corner: So you have the line first, and then fit the rhythms to that line? You have the text first, and then you come up with the rhythms for it?

Talib Kweli: That’s how it started. Nowadays, it’s honestly married. I think about things in couplets. Rhymes pop in my head as I’m watching TV or walking down the street.

Composer’s Corner: So you’re constantly coming up with rhymes?

Talib Kweli: Yeah.

Composer’s Corner: The couplet form is far and away from the raps that you see earlier in your career. Did it take you a while to come back to this easier and simpler form to rap in? Do you start with the couplet and build off that?

Talib Kweli: Now, I come up with a bunch of couplets. And when they start making sense together, then I’ll write them down on my phone or piece of paper. Then it’s coming together. You know how you exercise a muscle and it becomes second nature? At this point creating music and getting the music from the stage of a thought in my head and to onto a record to onto a stage where I’m performing it, I see all of that at the same time now. When I was writing as a teenager at 13 or 14 years old, and this it what made my style develop, there was no outlet. There was no knowledge, there was no understanding of how anyone was gonna hear this. Now, I write with more experience, more resources, more urgency. Like, “Okay, I can get this out. I can shoot a video.” But back then, I was just writing for other writers only. I had a real interesting experience with Def Poetry Jam. My writing when I first started was intricate enough that I could go to a spoken word event and rap. And it people would take it the same as an ill spoken word piece. But when I got to do Def Poetry Jam by the time Black Star came out and Mos Def was a little famous and we could be on TV doing this, I froze up. Because I had been stuck in writing 16 bar raps for a couple years. And I had fallen out of the habit of being loose with the pen and writing these long, loquacious, multisyllabic rhymes. And I didn’t have anything that I felt like I could offer. And that’s sort of where “Lonely People” came from. The style that I rap on “Lonely People,” which is a record that I don’t think ever came out, thatr was like me trying to get back to that intricacy. That is a part of what I do.

Composer’s Corner: Early on, you didn’t have access to beats and styuff like thast. Some people, like you were saying before, would use that as a criticism. But you see that as something essential in the development of your personal, unique, signature style of loquaciousness?

Talib Kweli: Without a doubt. Of course there was the influence of my parents, how my parents raised me. They taught me what they taught me, and taking me to museums and libraries every weekend. That has had a huge impact on my style, my parents and the household that I came from in Brooklyn. But if we’re just talking technique, that’s where the technique comes from.

Composer’s Corner: Say you’re watching TV and coming up with couplets, like you were saying before, and you write it on your phone. When you come back to it later to work on that rap, how do you remember what the rhythm was in the first place? Do you write it down with spaces or slashes to indicate rhythms?

Talib Kweli: That’s what I was talking about, with the muscle memory. At this point, if I write it down, I can remember the rhythms.

Composer’s Corner: You’ve got such a complex style. Do sometimes consciously dial it back to make the message more straightforward for the listener?

Talib Kweli: Not so much to make the message. I never dial it back for the message, but I do dial it back for the musicality. Sometimes, it’s like Evidence, who’s a great producer-rapper, he said, “It’s not where you place your rhymes, it’s where you don’t.” Sometimes that’s true. Sometimes spaces are gorgeous. You need space, and you need time for the music to breathe.

Composer’s Corner: Can you think of the time when your style changed from not having the beats until after you write the rap to having the beats before you write the rap? It seems like you had that former style until at least through the debut Black Star album, Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star.

Talib Kweli: Definitely, definitely. John Forte was probably my biggest influence musically-wise, Hip Hop-wise. Here’s a guy from the neighborhood who knew all the rappers in the industry because he just went out a lot and was very ambitious. He was a very talented rapper back then. Me and him were kind of a group, partnered together. We never had no beats. And instead of waiting on people to give us beats, Jpohn Forte learned how to make beats. And to this day, his learning how to make beats and play the guitar has been his saving grace. It’s carried him through life. He learned how to make beats, so my first beats I got were from John Forte and people around him. You asked earlier who taught me how to count bars, it was John Forte. He was like, “You’re rapping too much, you have to count bars. This is where the hook goes. Songs have a format.” I didn’t know any of that. Me and him are the exact same age. We met freestyling in Washington Park. We both went to boarding schools. We graduated the same year. We became roommates at NYU. But when we became roommates at NYU, while I went to theatre school, he spent one week at NYU and went and said, “I’m going to do music for a living.” And he dropped out.

Composer’s Corner: That seems to be a theme with your crew. I think Jean Grae did the same thing, she dropped out of NYU after she realized she already knew everything about the music business that they were going to teach her.

Talib Kweli: Yeah. Do you know how far back I go with Jean?

Composer’s Corner: I think I found out about Jean through you, but didn’t realize it went back that far.

Talib Kweli: Well, I knew Jean before I knew John Forte. When I met Jean Grae I was 14-years old. She wasn’t rapping publicly. She was just Tsidi, the girl we used to hang out with in the village. Then she started rapping. I can’t say whether she just started rapping or if she just started rapping in public. But she was really, really, really, really extra good. Those rhyme ciphers I was talking about in Washington Park, she was there. She was there for all of that.

Composer’s Corner: So is it only recently that your relationship with her has become more professional? For instance, she was on your label, and you guys started showing up on each other’s songs.

Talib Kweli: Jean is like a real New York city kid. She wasn’t just into Hip Hop, she was into all the underground music that was coming out of New York at the time. There was a trance scene, and an electronic scene, and a rave scene, and house music. Jean was doing all of that, where I was just doing Hip Hop. Jean kind of disappeared off the scene for a minute around the time when I was hanging out with John Forte actually. Then she came back around. People started putting out independent records. There was this crib on Clinton in Brooklyn, in Clinton Hills, where it was like OT, and Aggie, and Bad Seed, and Jean Grae, and Pumpkinhead, and everybody would be at this one crib making music. And Jean was the break-out all of that. She was making tracks under the name Run Run Shaw . She had ill raps. The group was called Natural Resources, and they were performing all around the city. They were developing a buzz. Jean started developing a buzz actually before I started developing a buzz.

Composer’s Corner: I didn’t realize that. I always thought it was funny, that four of my top five rappers have close relationships with each other, both personally and professionally. That’s you, Jean, Pharoahe, and Mos Def. How did you get to know them?

Talib Kweli: When Jean started making records and popping off, and becoming Jean Grae, developing the style she’s with now, that’s when I was on Rawkus. So we were part of the same scene, but it was different crews. Years later, when my manager and I, Corey Smith, came with the idea of doing Black Smith Music, we started talking about artists. And the first artist I mentioned was Jean Grae. I didn’t know he was aware of Jean Grae. And not only was he aware of Jean Grae — as you know, she likes to go out to party and drink — but Jean was one of his drinking buddies. They would party together often. I kneow her from Washington Square park, and Hip Hop shit. And he knew her, like, “Oh, that’s the girl I hang out with all the time.” Me and Corey both were like, “Okay, yeah, Jean is perfect for blacksmith.” I had been trying to get Jean on a song. Jean Grae jumped on “Black Girl Pain”, but I had tried to get Jean on Black Star. She was just doing her own thing. But she jumped on “Black Girl Pain,” and me and Corey get the label, that’s when we were like, “Jean Grae.” So that developed into my real friendship with Jean. Me and Jean were really good friends when we were 14, 15, and then we didn’t hang out for years. And then we became close again, years later.

Composer’s Corner: A lot of discussion in Hip Hop is over flow: what it is, who has it, and stuff like that. If you had to define it, what would you say? And how do you create good flow?

Talib Kweli: Flow for Hip Hop is like improvisation for jazz. Everyone has a different style. You have Miles, you have John Coltrane, and they have their own signature horn style, and that’s what your flow is like. The beat can remain the same or the beat can change, but your flow is how you interpret the beat. For me, the more free and loose I am, the better I flow. It’s something that you can overdo, or it’s something that you can not pay attention to. My flow has developed over time. I personally feel like right now in my career, over the past 4 or 5 years, I’ve been flowing the best of my career. Definitely. I would argue anybody down and play records. I would say, “Listen to my flow on this. Listen to it.” I feel like I’m becoming a master of my style, and I’ve experimented with a lot of different flows. A lot of different ones.

Composer’s Corner: Is rap more poetry, melody, or is it when you combine both together?

Talib Kweli: It’s all of that. It’s definitely when you combine all of that together. There are rappers who I love, that I’m scared of, like, “Damn, that motherfucker can flow. Damn, he can rap.” But they’ve never made a song I like. I wouldn’t go as far to name them.

Composer’s Corner: You’re saying that it never came together, the flow working well with the beat?

Talib Kweli: Yeah. You hear somebody and you recognize the talent, and you’re like, “Wow, that person can really rap. Wow, if they could just figure out what beat to flow on and how to make a song, it would be dope.” I’m aware enough of myself as an artist to know that there’s people who feel that way about me. There’s people who feel like “Get By” is my only good song, and I don’t pick good beats. I would beg to differ. But there’s people who feel like that, and there’s people who feel like that about me as well.

Composer’s Corner: So does every rapper have their own unique flow? And the question is how to make it fit to a certain beat and how to express yourself in a way that makes sense?

Talib Kweli: I’m saying that’s how it should be, and that’s what the best rappers do. There are flows that get popular. There was a Jadakiss flow that got popular. You know whose flow has gotten extremely popular lately? Chief Keef. The whole industry started rapping like that. There’s certain flows that get popular and people run with them. Definitely, Das EFX had one of the more popular flows.

Composer’s Corner: You were saying you flow the best when you’re free with it. Do you mean with where your place your rhymes, how long your sentences are, the words you use, or stuff like that?

Talib Kweli: All of that, but also how relaxed it is. Even if it’s a loud beat and an aggressive rhyme, the more relaxed I am when I’m performing it, it just flows better. It melds into the track better.

Composer’s Corner: I can’t think of a real specific song where you go hype on some shit, like DMX would.

Talib Kweli: There’s records that are certainly louder. “Human Mic,” on my new album that just came out, called Prisoner of Conscious. “Feel the Rush,” from my album Quality. There’s certain records. “We Got The Beat.” But yeah, you’re right. I would actually like to do that more. With Idol Warship, my collaboration with Res, I got to do different things flow-wise and vocally that I would have hesitated to do on a solo project.

Composer’s Corner: If you were to give advice to a starting rapper on how to be a better rapper, what would you say?

Talib Kweli: I would say study the greats. Study those albums. Great art is a collage. There’s nothing wrong with taking a bit of Jay-Z, taking a bit of Nas, taking a bit of Scarface, taking a bit of Ice Cube, taking a bit of whoever. Then, find an artistic community. Try to find one that’s live in the flesh, but definitely find one online. Soundcloud, Tumblr, wherever. Find an artistic community of people you can bounce ideas off of. That you can go rap to, and they can kick a rhyme to you that’s better than your shit that makes you go, “Oh, I got to go back to the lab.”

Composer’s Corner: What are some of those great albums you would say to check out?

Talib Kweli: Definitely Reasonable Doubt or Illmatic. Those to me are the giants of cohesive albums with incredible flows and lyrics. There’s also Main Source’s album, Breaking Atoms. The early KRS-One album. With Boogie Down Productions, called BY All Means Necessary. The Blueprint. Those things are dope. A lot of the Nas albums. Nas albums definitely. Jay-Z albums. The Kendrick Lamar album that just came out, where as a lyricist you’re like, “Holy fuck.”

Composer’s Corner: Do you see anything knew on that album that could move rap in a new direction, with his flow or any of that?

Talib Kweli: What’s interesting about him is that he has a flow that is very much part of his crew’s flow. Sometimes I hear in Kendrick aspects of Ab-Soul, aspects of ScHoolboy Q, aspects of Jay Rock, and sometimes in their music I hear aspects of him. But everybody’s still got their own thing. And I like that. That’s what I mean about having an artistic community. When you hear them do a flow that’s similar, oit’s clear that it’s because thjey’ve spent a lot of time together. And everybody has their own interpretation of it. And that’s what makes them greta. Those guys lyrically man, you don’t find that since Wu-Tang, where lyrically everybody all have something to offer.

Composer’s Corner: Do you see that kind of mutual influence dynamic working in your crew at all, with Jean or Mos?

Talib Kweli: I consider myself part of a loose knit crew of the best emcees. I consider Black Thought as my crew. Jean Grae, Mos Def, Wordsworth and Punchline, I definitely consider that part of my crew and when you hear me on a record talking about my crew, that’s who I’m talking about.

Composer’s Corner: So kind of like the extended Okayplayer family.

Talib Kweli: Yeah, exactly.

Composer’s Corner: I want to see how your process of rapping works in real time. So I’m going to give you a line that someone else from your crew has rapped, and I want to see what you would do with it next, how you would continue that rap line. Is that cool?

Talib Kweli: Okay, let’s try that.

Composer’s Corner: This is a Pharoahe Monch line. I tried to pick a line that would be similar to what you’d write. I’ll read it, and you can say what rhythm you’d use, or how you’d rhyme next. The line is, “This line will remain in the mind of my foes forever in infamy.”

Talib Kweli: The first thing I would do is find a word, probably a multisyllabic word, that goes with infamy. Something as close to infamy as I could. That’s the first thing I’d do. “Symphony”, is probably the easiest one to pick. I’d think of what “symphony” has to do with that. I always approach it as a writer first. What would symphony have to do witht hat? I’d probably spend some time on it. Symphony…Then I’d say something like, “The words are my instruments, it’s a symphony.” That’s about three-fourths of a couplet, right there: “These lines will remain in the minds of my foes forever in infamy.” That’s most of it taken up, so I only got a little bit left. So my flow would be dependent on that. You know what I’d probably do right there? I’d probably save what I just came up with, “The words are my instruments, it’s a symphony,” and find another word that rhymes with it. Let’s say “mystery”, for the sake of argument. So it’d be, : “These lines will remain in the minds of my foes forever in infamy / They don’t have a clue, it’s a mystery / “The words are my instruments, it’s a symphony.” And maybe add, “When I’m on the mic, I make history.”

Composer’s Corner: That’s actually very similar to what Pharoahe Monch does with that line, which is from the song “No Mercy.” He raps, “This rhyme, will remain in the minds of my foes forever in infamy / The epitome of lyrical epiphanies / Skillfully placed home we carefully plan symphonies.” You can see that he also rhymes on symphony, and actually has the same rhythm for that first line.

Talib Kweli: Maybe that’s just me remembering what he did then, since I’ve heard it before.

Composer’s Corner: True. Let’s try just one more. How about, “Real rhymes, not your everyday hologram.”

Talib Kweli: I’d think about twitter, or instagram, or follow man, but toss that to the side because that’s too easy…I’d probably go with a metaphor about Kevin Bacon as the character Hollow Man from that movie. So something like, “Real rhymes, not your everyday hologram / Can’t see through it, Kevin Bacon, no Hollow Man.”

Composer’s Corner: Damn. Shit man! You can come up with that so quick. That’s what you were saying before, how you see it all. I think of a point guard who sees the whole court and sees stuff develop before anyone else doies.

Talib Kweli: Point guard is a great example. I grew up playing baseball. People say baseball is boring, but the reason people say boring is because the whole time you have to see every possible scenario. And I think that’s helped me in my writing.

Composer’s Corner: Sometimes, I’m not too hot on rappers who seem to write 2 lines and then skip to a different subject. They just seem to have not written one verse all the way through, and just throw together bars willy-nilly until it makes 16.

Talib Kweli: Well, there are some great non-sequitur rappers though. Ghostface, Killah, MF DOOM is probably the greatest. I think there’s a style to it. I think Lil Wayne, to be honest with you,a s very good at it. People get mad at home because he focuses strictly on eating pussy at this point. That’s what it is, it’s not that he can’t do it. But think of how many different ways he’s come up with to tell you that he likes eating pussy.

Composer’s Corner: That alone is impressive.

Talib Kweli: Yeah, pretty impressive. [Laughs]

Composer’s Corner: Actually, that second line I gave you to rap off of was an MF DOOM line, from the song “Vomitspit.” I picked those lines because they reminded me of something you might spit, with longer words and rhymes and stuff like that.

Composer’s Corner: Say you’re in the studio and you’re coming up with your line. How much of the rhythm at the mic when you’re recording is improvised or worked on? Or is it the same take every time?

Talib Kweli: I definitely try different flows. I definitely do, for most of my rhymes. Especially the morewordy ones. Some of them are just straightforward. But for the more wordy rhymes, I try different flows every time until I lock in on one that makes sense. And then I perfect that one.

Composer’s Corner: In the recording process, how much of there is a back and forth between the rap you come up with and the beat the producer has come up with?

Talib Kweli: Truthfully, every song is different. I would definitely say the majority of the time it’s me going through rough, rough beats. Rough soul ideas. Loops, and drum ideas, and stuff like that, and then I’m like, “I like that.” And then getting with the producer and we add stuff to it.

Composer’s Corner: So you’re in on the producing pretty early?

Talib Kweli: I’m in on the process of picking the track early, but producing is adding everything to it. I pick a lot of loops, I pick loops. Like, “Okay, I like that,” then we build on that. To me, the build on top of it is obvious.

Composer’s Corner: Jean Grae had a theory that certain words, and even certain syllables, elicit emotional responses in listeners. Do you feel the same? And do you have a favorite word, like she does?

Talib Kweli: I don’t know if I have a favorite word. I think she’s right, and that’s something that you have to know intuitively.

Talib Kweli Sheet Music - Twice Inna Lifetime

Below is the sheet music transcription of Talib Kweli's rap verse on the song "Twice Inna Lifetime", performed in his group with Mos Def, called "Blackstar." First is shown a video demonstrating the rhythms, playing them through the computer. Skip ahead to 0:56 for this particular song.

Talib Kweli Sheet Music - RE: DEFinition

Below are the notated rap rhythms of Talib Kweli's words on the song "RE: DEFinition." The video is a demonstration of those rhythms - the bass kick counts the beat off while the triangle plays Talib's words.

Rapper's Flow Encyclopedia - Talib Kweli

I’ve analyzed Jean Grae. I’ve analyzed Pharoahe Monch. I’ve analyzed Mos Def…twice. The next member of what I consider the rap Justice League that I’ll be analyzing is Talib Kweli.

Just like I did for MF DOOM here and 2pac here, I will be taking a look at what I consider Talib Kweli’s signature flow – the flow he uses that no one else does, that is very unique, and that he comes back to time and again. It can be found to greater and lesser extents throughout all of his work, but I’ve picked two of the most exemplary instances: his rap on “RE: DEFinition”, from the Blackstar group with Mos Def, and his verse on “Twice Inna Lifetime”, from the same album. Kweli is similar to Big Sean, who I analyzed here, in that they both have very identifiable signature flows. That specific phenomenon is found in a rather more general nature in other rappers, like Lil Wayne circa Tha Carter I.

In other articles, I noted general features of a rapper, like Jean Grae’s block rhyming skills here, but Kweli’s defining feature is the pace of his musical rhythms. In my 2pac article here I talked about the pacing of rhymes – how a rapper varies how complex and how long his or her rhymes are over a verse. What defines Kweli’s signature flow is, instead, the pacing of rhythms – how quick his syllables are delivered in musical time. We’ll see what his approach adds up to in terms of wordiness and such at the end of this article.

You can hear “RE: DEFinition” here:

Get the Rapgenius lyrics here.

Even if you’ve never taken a day of music lessons in your life, you can tell that there are certain points where Kweli starts talking faster and slower – for instance, around 0:43 in the video above. Before that he was talking slower, however.

As I explained in my 2nd article, the Busta Rhymes one here, from the “30 Days of Rap Analysis Extravaganza Bonanza” supporting the publishing of my book here, all rap music is organized into beats. Not the backing musical track that producers like Kanye West make, but the beat as a music theory term.

A beat always lasts the same amount of musical time, just like a second. However, it does not last the same amount of chronological time between different songs, because some songs are fast and some songs are slow. Musicians use beats to count so that they can make any fast or slow song still playable, because beats are easier to count. For instance, they don’t count “1.25 seconds, 2.50 seconds”, and on. Instead, they count “beat 1, beat 2, beat 3”, and so on. It is simply the rate at which beats come, measured per minute, that decides whether a song is slow or fast.

One of those beats can also be called a quarter note. To make faster rhythms, we split the quarter note in half, making 8th notes, and 8th notes in half, making 16th notes. The 16th note is the rhythmic level at which most rap music happens. So, to get there, we divide the quarter note by 4, because 1 16th note lasts ¼ of a quarter note. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t divide a beat into other numbers, like 5, as Kweli does.

Below is a demonstration of the quintuplet rhythm — division by 5 of the beat — that Kweli uses in his signature flow. In it, you’ll hear/see that low drum playing the beat that measures the music. In the music above it, you’ll hear/see a triangle playing first 2 quarter notes, then 2 eighth notes that are connected above the circular note heads with 1 line, and then hear the triangle play 4 16th notes that are connected over the circular note heads by 2 lines. Then, the drum will play 2 bars of rest, and then you’ll hear a bar of those 16th notes, which is where most rap music happens. It’s pretty easy to follow along, because they are slower than quintuplets, which are played next after 2 more bars of only the bass kick playing. You can hear that there are 5 notes to a beat, and that they come much more quickly. Finally, after 2 more bars of the bass kick, you can hear the triangle switch back between playing 4 16th notes to a beat first, then 5 16th notes to a beat, then 4 16th notes, then 5 16th notes, and so on, for 2 full measures. Listen for how the quintuplet 16th notes, those with the 5 under them, are faster than the regular 16th notes.

You can hear the quintuplet rhythms are much quicker and harder to count and pay attention to. This makes Kweli’s rhythms extremely complex.

These quicker rhythms are the major defining style of Kweli’s rhythms. It is also a very good demonstration of the concept of pacing in a rapper’s rhythms. Pacing refers to how a rapper will vary their rhymes or rhythms in terms of how complex they are and how quickly they drop them throughout an entire verse. A major downfall for most beginner rappers is that they don’t know how to pace their rap. For example, they have a constant amount of rhymes, say, 1 or 2 per bar, and they are always end rhymes. A good rapper will vary this – start out with a simple 2-syllable rhyme couplet, for instance, then move to a heavy amount of internal rhymes on a single vowel sound.
Kweli’s rap demonstrates a pacing of rhythms, not necessarily the rhymes. For instance, at the start of RE: DEFinition, he starts out with the simple quadruplets (the 4 16th notes to a beat), with 3-syllable end rhymes on the tragedy/passionately/cavity/gravity series:

This lays the opening for a verse very well. It’s not too fast, so we have room to both increase the complexity or come down from it. It’s comparable to a movie, so it makes sense: the action in a movie doesn’t all come at the beginning, does it? No, you save the action and the climax for later. Because, immediately after those lines, he moves into the quicker quintuplet rhythms described before:

The rhymed words are capitalized in all the notations.

We’re interested in the “battery” to “mad at me” part of the verse above. We see that he’s increased the speed of the rhythms, upping the tension, and throws in multi-syllable internal rhymes at a much quicker rate than before: battery/back of me/mad emcee/ flattery/actually/mad at me. That’s a rate of more than double how many rhymes he was dropping before.

And, after upping the tension to such an unbearable and unsustainable rate, what would we expect any good music-maker to do? That’s right, manipulate and play upon your expectations. So, next we get:

In the above, we don’t get a constant approach to rhyme like we had before. Sometimes the rhymes are internal, sometimes they are external, and they don’t always fall in the same place in the bar. Sometimes there is just 1 rhyme (the sentence with “to you”), sometimes there are more (judo/menudo/pseudo.) Those quick rhyme flips on very unique words, like judo/Menudo/pseudo, are very characteristic of Talib’s signature flow as well. He’s fond of taking hard to rhyme words and then repeating them quickly, especially across sentences, at the end of one and the start of the next. We get another good example of that next:

There, he rhymes “Xerox” with “hair locks”, a rhyme none of us have ever heard before (unlike something like “mother” with “brother), and then quickly rhymes hair locks with teardrops. He follows this up by flipping “lives” with “wives” across the sentence, and then quickly rhymes widows/pillows/willows. Notice here, again, how he’s increased the tension with quicker quintuplet rhythms. He is constantly changing up the pacing of his verse in order to keep things interesting.
The rest of his verse is less tension-filled than the preceding bars. He continues to use mostly quadruplet rhythms with end rhymes. He ends by having 1 sentence per bar in 4 straight bars with an end rhyme all on the same vowel sounds (partners/artist/starter/martyr):

The reader will probably remember that that is the exact way he started the verse as well. Then, he ends with 2 bars rhyming on enhancing/can’t run, which is the same vowel sound that Mos will rhyme on next when he raps, “Lyrically handsome / go collect the king’s ransom…”

That is one of the best techniques for two rappers to use together, the book of which was pretty much written by Run-D.M.C. I could go more into that, but that really deserves its own article.
We see a lot of the same principles at work in the next song, called “Twice Inna Lifetime.” He starts off with a slower pace again, rhyming 1 syllable internal rhymes on fonts (which is mis-labelled as “Fonz” in the sheet music)/conk/front/monch in one long sentence, another feature of Talib’s rap.

Then, in almost the same exact position as the first verse above, he moves into that quick, percussive spitting mode, where he separates all the syllables from each other as he pronounces them. In music notation, that’s called “staccato.”

Again, he has those quick, long, unique rhyme flips across sentences, on the rhyme group masturbation/ejaculation/vaccinations/fascination/assassination/sensations. All this while dropping those characteristic quintuplets. We see the basic principle of pacing at work again: first slow, then fast, then slow again.

The 2nd half of this verse is easily some of my favorite Kweli lines ever. That’s because of how quickly he varies the underlying pulse of the tempo of the rap. Let’s look at this part:

Next is coming some math, but at the end I break it all down. Just skim through it if you don’t quite follow.

You can see from the notation above that just like he’s been dividing the beat into 5, called quintuplets, and 4, called quadruplets, he here divides the beat into 3 (called triplets, on “both got sons”), and also 6 (on “me and” or “think I’m”), called sextuplets. If you listen to that section, listen for how quickly the time Talib takes to say these words changes. If you pay very close attention, you’ll notice that the rhythmic durations are close in duration, but not exactly the same. Although the beat of the song stays constant, Talib is changing the division of the beat. This technique is a very contemporary rhythmic trick that has entered classical music in full only very recently, in the 20th century with the work of Elliott Carter. What Talib is doing here is taking advantage of the mathematical relationships of tempo.

As I explained before, there are 4 beats to a bar, and the speed of a song is determined by BPM, which is “beats per minute.” If there is a high BPM, the song is faster; if there is a low BPM, the song is slower. The BPM of this song is about 94. In layman’s terms, music can theoretically be played at any speed, so there has to be some points at which rhythmic layers are equivalent to each other in chronological duration (measured in seconds), even though they might be 16th notes in one tempo and 8th notes in another. There has to be these relations because, while music can be played at any speed, a musical note can also theoretically be divided by any number – 2, 3, and 4 most commonly, but also 5 (like Talib), 6, 7, 11, and so on.

Below is the formula for finding these points at which two different tempos line up:



The above describes a shift from the speed of one song (“old tempo” on the left) to another (“new tempo”), using a note value from the first tempo (“pivot note value in old measure”) to a note value in the second (“pivot note values in new measure.”) We have values for 3 of those variables above: old tempo (94, as noted above), pivot notes in old measure (“4”, because of the 4 16th notes to a beat as usual), and the number of pivot note values in new measure (“5”, for all those quintuplets that Talib uses.) So, if we solve for “new tempo”, we eventually get new tempo = 117.5 BPM
This means that Talib’s quintuplets, fitting 5 16th notes to a beat, sound the same as 4 16th notes played to a beat at 117.5 BPM. This makes sense logically because those quintuplets in the song sound faster than the normal quadruplet 16th notes, so we’d expect them to be equal to a faster, higher BPM tempo.

But Talib also does this with the number 6 and the number 3. So, for 6, old tempo = 94 again, old pivot value = 4 again, but new pivot value = 6, so tempo speed = 141 BPM. Doing the same thing for 3, the new tempo = 70.5 BPM. This again makes sense because those triplets on “both got sons” sound slower than the notes around it.

What all this means is that Talib, over the space of 5 bars, has actually implied 4 different tempos: 70.5 BPM (the triplets), 94 BPM (the quadruplets), 117.5 BPM (the quintuplets), and 141 BPM (the sextuplets). THAT is my favorite aspect of Talib’s rap: it’s so complex, so angular and edgy, but ultimately satisfying and handled in the exact correct way. That is, Talib isn’t forcing complex rhythms on a word structure that can’t carry those rhythms.

If you tune out the beat of the song and listen to how the speed of the notes changes in ways that are divisible by numbers other than 2, you will hear what I do. Don’t break your neck to the bass kick and snare like usual; bounce to the changing rhythms of Talib’s words. Sometimes he’s fast, then he’s slow…then he’s slower, then he’s faster than ever before…

He does the same thing in the above: look for the 6s and 5s over the notes. You will also hear all this in the demonstration video at the end of this article. (Note that I repeated the syllable “an” of “androgynous”, because the rhythm was too complex and would’ve taken a while for me to figure out.) And pacing is apparent through out this whole section: between the fast rhythms above and the section above that, we get a series of beats with only the slower quadruplet, 4-16th-notes-to-a-beat rhythms.



Oh shit, how’d that slip in there? My bad…

Just for kicks, here are his stats. Note that he’s got the highest syllables per bar and the lowest sentences per bar. He’s also got the 2nd longest words, behind MF DOOM, in terms of syllables per word, and the lowest rhyme density, with 28% of his syllables being rhymed. So, he’s very wordy and has long sentences, backing up his reputation as being every technically complex.

As usual, here is the demonstration video of his rhythms:

And to Talib, if you’re out there: I’d love an interview. My email is martinedwardconnor@gmail.com. Ask Jean or Pharoahe if it was any good!

Thanks for reading y’all.

Talib Kweli Analysis Now Published!

Find it at Rapgenius.com.

hosting for rapgenius - talib kweli article