Richard Prks Journal #9

Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star is a beacon which intends to capture anyone of the struggling black population as its main audience. There is a specific focus on the empowerment of black people through intimate examples of the struggles of being a black person living in the ghettos of the city. This is a tool used to capture the attention of the audience to help the black community identify with the artists.

There is a poetic flow to each one of the songs which is a signature sound to the entire album. It seems to be more of spoken word with background music rather than any specific genre of music. Its sound is most closely related to hip-hop and rap but it feels like a specific story is being told in each of the songs, making it feel more like a narrative than a genre of music.

It’s interesting to listen to the music because it seems as though the artists are not trying to speak to any outside force to try to change the lives of the black city community. They seem to speak specifically to the black community to bring about a change in them because the only way that change can occur is if they act on it. Specifically, in the song “Thieves in the Night”, Mos Def and Talib Kweli refer to the black people as thieves in the night, hiding from themselves and running from their problems. 

This album is a “rise up and make a change” album that uses the sounds that the black people can identify with and usually listen to. The main purpose of this album is to cope with, as well as hold a mirror to, the black community through stories from the ghettos that will spark some sort of realization of the lives that they’re living.