After listening to the album Mos Def & Talbi Kweli Are Black Star by Black Star I got a very strong hip hop vibe from their music. I felt that way because the music itself was more simplistic and clearly not the focus of each song. What seemed to matter the most were the lyrics which follows along well with modern hip hop as a genre. However, some of the lyrics did give off a sense of being more like "Gangsta Rap" based on the message that was trying to get across such as making a statement against society. Most of the lyrics though involve the life of growing up in New York which does imitate normal hip hop.
In the song "Children's Story" the entire song is commenting on the history of hip hop and how it started from people stealing beats from other songs and using it for their own and making money off of the copy. This commentary really speaks and portrays the beginning of hip hop yet there is a negative tone in the song as if they think it was a bad thing what the artists that started hip hop did to make their music. In the song "Brown Skin Lady" the whole song is degrading woman, even though it is not as crude as many Gangsta Rap songs are in comparison it still has taken a step away from hip hop with the misogyny.
Overall this album does not conform with the original genre requirements of hip hop, but with the changes and adaptation of the genre today I would say that it does fall into that genre fairly well. Just like many other artists they try to stretch the genre and do things a little different, but this does not really take them far outside the hip hop genre.
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