talib kweli - get by


the new rawkus mix cd is mostly concerned with putting all those mcs who were exciting years ago (mos, talib, skillz, monch) over nearly brand new beats like "in da club" and that neptunes common shit to see how they measure up or to offer a very slightly alternate vision of what could be on the radio instead of 50 (it turns out it would be almost exactly the same! although there is no one on the radio as outrageously annoying as skillz). westwood had the rawkus chairmen types on the other week, they're fucking boring but westwood made an interesting comment: he claimed he wasn't sure in 97/98 if mainstream rap was gonna go the way of jay z or rawkus. i can't remember whether there is any truth to this, i think at the time i was just getting whatever shit that came into (shudder) happy vibes records and had absolutely no quality control or sense of what was bigtime. i do think rawkus has been running with this parallel radio universe thing for a while though, perhaps since it 'lost' to jigga, which at least makes it more ambitious and sometimes fun than umpteen million undie labels.

kweli follows through bringing kanye west on production for "get by" - dude is a fucking genius! for serious, i don't think we even know yet how important the blueprint was by giving kanye and just blaze a good rep; the two of them are sucking up everything that came before and throwing out new beat templates on a weekly basis. blaze is currently on a fast+heavy early-nineties-funk-hop tip with that joe budden song and the new memphis bleek single ("everything's a go" check it out!). kanye is doing all sorts of shit but "get by" is one of those really perfect soul beats where you don't know how he's making everything fit together so nicely. it's like how a live band should sound but never, ever does!

there's also this catchy shout along chorus with backing singers and hand claps and they're going: "this morning, i woke up / feeling brand new and i jumped up / feeling my highs and my lows / in my soul, and my goals / just to stop smoking, and stop drinking". i was really seriously considering giving up smoking recently. i still am trying to cut down, but when i hear "get by" it makes me want to light up just to piss kweli off! that's really my problem though. dude can't help but be positive and preachy. i still sing along! and i still think this is my favourite song at the moment.