When radio stations blasted Busta Rhymes' "Pass the Courvoisier" nonstop back in '02, young black America's newly whetted taste for the liquor single-handedly saved France's dying brandy industry, and forged the oddest transatlantic bond since Joe Millionaire's European tryst. This year, in a repeat show of efficacy, icons like Puffy and Andre 3000 have made public appeals to fight political apathy, sparking surged interest in politics amongst the hip-hop masses, and narrowing the gap between hip-hop's cultural and political influence as the country shifts into election mode.
The Beautiful Struggle revels in hip-hop's recent emergence as an iconic powerhouse while reintroducing Brooklyn native and "three time Nobel prize winner" Talib Kweli as one of the genre's most vocal supporters and sharpest antagonists. This duality has always been present in Kweli's catalog: His music embraces the binding value of truth as much as it documents his divergence from the methods traditionally used to uphold it. But that's one reason why The Beautiful Struggle makes such a curious addition to his oeuvre: It again challenges his unquestioned integrity in its choice of producers while re-evaluating his political poignancy for the new audiences they open him up to.
For purists, anything commercial is death, and though 2002's Quality hinted that a move toward a more mainstream team of producers might not be out of the question on a future release, the sight of producers like The Neptunes, Just Blaze, and Kanye West (who appeared once on Quality before he was an unstoppable force on Top 40 radio) here could be a point of contention for Kweli's more uptight contingency. However, the fact that The Beautiful Struggle marks the return of original collaborator Hi-Tek is good news for any Kweli fan-- even if he only appears on three of the album's tracks.
Meanwhile, up against harder hitting beats, Kweli plays his cards expertly: His adaptive, veteran flow serves as an unusually smart counterpoint to the glossy proclivities of his beatmakers, safeguarding him against a disaster like The Roots' Scott Storch collaboration "Don't Say Nuthin'". On "Never Been in Love", Talib's romanticism draws out a less fiery side of the typically aggressive Just Blaze. Here, behind cracking snares and wafting female intonations, Kweli lowers his political guard to wax lovely: "Jewel of the Nile so I'm romancing the stone/ The rhythm is in the words and I watched her dance to my poems."
But even while Kweli's navigation of Big Hip-Hop's tricky terrain is impressive, he predictably doesn't make it out completely unscathed. The Beautiful Struggle's weakest cuts utilize the industry's most banal and lucrative tactic: relentless repetition. "I Try" shamelessly rehashes Kweli's hit "Get By". (Note the re-rhyme.) For this one, Kanye drags out another set of syncopated hi-hats and John Legend piano licks while Mary J's guest vocal wears thin in contrast to Simone's moans. Later, MIDI Mafia intervenes with the confusing "We Got the Beat", a clumsy mix of vintage Afrika Bambaataa electro and Fefe Dobson soul-pop. I can overlook the occasional embarrassing line ("You just a clone like KFC") and even the questionable Go-Go's allusion, but the Kravitz-esque guitar solo that closes the track out is one too many strikes for this unsalvageable album low.
What frustrates about The Beautiful Struggle is that its flaws are purely musical: Kweli remains the fist-raising visionary who burned "The Manifesto" at the Lyricist Lounge with the same fiery pen that blazed "African Lounge". And whether he's indicting Sierra Leone's child-mining practices on "Going Hard" or lamenting the lost innocence of star-struck females on "Broken Glass", Kweli continually re-proves his aggressive conviction and reaffirms his title as hip-hop's cerebral emcee. Even his patented Afrocentrism finds a home here: "Black Girl Pain" intimately details his daughter's joys and pains as she suffers her parents' separation and the trials of a black childhood.
Talib's greatest challenge as a 21st century emcee, then, will be to reconcile his spiny message with the eminence of commercial slickness. Though The Beautiful Struggle falters at times, and never quite reaches the heights of Reflection Eternal, his decision to re-open doors to Hi-Tek for this record was a wise one: On the Tek-produced closing title track, Kweli's incisive commentary still captures the listener as it did on Train of Thought-- particularly as he closes out the record with the battle cry, "The struggle is too beautiful/ I'm too strong for your slavery." The music may be easily swallowed but the message is not.
