Vibe.com, December 19th, 2005
Overflowing with conscious rhymes and bitter jabs at the record industry, Talib Kweli’s The Official Sucka Free Mixtape is quintessential Kweli… most of the time.
“Right About Now,” the opening track, which Kweli calls the song that “sums up this project,” finds the rapper reminiscing over sparse beats and a sporadic electric guitar riff. Kweli quickly detours into sour territory, though, calling out Jimmy Iovine and Interscope (“Now that Interscope’s bitching, every artist who had a chance left ‘em”), and MCA/Geffen (he calls it “Music Cemetery of America”), and explains how he came to put out this mixtape on an independent label (“Took control of my situation / Got a label….” “Your boy free / I had to get out”).
Tracks like “Drugs, Basketball & Rap,” in which Kweli teams up with Planet Asia and Phil the Agony, are heavy on the rapper’s sage social commentary; Kweli manages to reference Lemony Snicket, Dave Chappelle and hip hop nemesis C. Delores Tucker. “Roll Off Me,” recorded in Kweli’s crib, and backed by a slow beat that can’t seem to contain Kweli’s need to spit his clever rhymes, contains the album’s obligatory jab at the President: “I touch more people in a verse than you do in 20 speeches.”
The much-hyped “Ms. Hill,” one of the album’s highlights, is part acerbic commentary on fame getting the best of The Fugees singer (“She look at me like she don’t know me when she see me nowadays”), and part love letter (“They won’t let you read your poem at the BET Awards / You give us hope, you give us faith, you the one / They don’t want to hear what you gotta say but they still beg you to come / Whoah, now that’s powerful, sis, that’s black power”). It’s also the most melodic track on the album, with sweet, high-pitch keys tip-toeing behind the rhymes.
But while tracks like “Supreme, Supreme” (feat. Mos Def) – which features the electric chemistry between the Black Star duo – remind listeners why they became Kweli fans in the first place, a few songs hit a more sour note.
As he proved on The Beautiful Struggle, Kweli is not meant to be a radio-friendly rapper; he sounds much more at home toting his backpack. “Fly That Knot” (feat. MF Doom) in which the combination of overdone guitars and keys drown out Kweli’s lyrical talent, and “Rock On,” where Kweli attempts rough-edged rhymes (“My sound freak you out like rough sex in the studio”) then, are both the most hook-laden candidates for singles, and the most awkward tracks on the album.
Despite the forays into Top 40 territory, Right About Now is mostly representative of Kweli’s vision of achieving success through quality rhymes. If he can shake off this much of the major label influence just a year after fleeing for an indie, imagine what he’ll pull out of that pack next.
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