Kevin Stefanye Journal #9

Black Star’s Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star is definitely an interesting album. I recognized immediately many aspects of old school hip-hop, but at the same time, there’s a bit of r&b involved. I heard some slower beats that could be called r&b, although this album is a perfect example of classic hip-hop, despite its 2002 release date at a time when classic hip-hop was a dying art form.

This album is pretty much the definition of hip-hop, which is a big change-up from their previous 1995 album everyday, which has almost zero hip-hop influence. In fact, when I heard it after the album had finished playing on Spotify, I did not believe it was them. It has a much more “poppy” sound, with heavy use of synthesizers and has many characteristics that one would find in 80’s music. This album talks about the struggles of everyday life, and the rappers have a tough attitude like most hip-hop artists. Black Star promotes black pride, as seen in the song Brown Skin Lady, where they encourage black women to be proud of their heritage and natural beauty. The artists make a few references to hip-hop history as well, as evidenced in the song Definition. In that song, Black Star references the deaths of The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac to highlight the fact that hip-hop is causing too much violence now a days. Black Star promotes peace, which is a bit anti-typical of today’s music. This is also different from the majority of today’s music in that it talks about the everyday life of normal people rather than alcohol, drugs, and women, which gets rather repetitive after a while.

As I was listening, I thought I heard Children’s Story by Pretty Rick, and I looked at Spotify and saw that they were doing a cover of it! I used to listen to that song a lot, and I always thought the lyrics to that song were particularly interesting, so I thought that was pretty cool.