The Beautiful Struggle

On Talib Kweli's third album, Beautiful Struggle, he's found spitting his thought-provoking rhymes over a lot more club/radio friendly beats. Songs like Back Up Off Me, produced by fellow Reflection Eternal member Hi-Tek, sound as if they would bang in the club, but dig deeper into the lyrics and you'll see that he hasn't compromised his message to appeal to the masses. On Ghetto Show, featuring Common, they trade verses about what life is like in their environment. Herein lies a part of the problem. Kweli is good at spelling out the problems that face us, but where are the solutions? I'm not asking for the answer to world hunger, just some idea of where he would like to see the country go.

I Try, featuring Mary J. Blige, finds him trying to recapture the magic he found with Get By, and it comes out sounding too much like "Get By part II."

The main problem with this record is that it seems like he's trying too hard to appeal to the casual rap fan by providing radio-friendly tracks to support his deeply lyrical style. Songs like Around My Way, featuring John Legend, come off corny, while an attempt to bring some of that "Ol' School" back with We Got The Beat sounds like something from a bad episode of the Mickey Mouse club.

The record's title can be applied to so many things in life. Kweli himself could even use it to describe what it was like making this record: the struggle to straddle the fence between the underground hip-hop and the casual rap fan. The thing that makes it beautiful is that it's all about the music. The sad part about this Beautiful Struggle is the real struggle with its identity.