I've always had latent backpacker tendencies, and Talib Kweli is the one token Rawkus guy I still rep for, I liked him way more than Mos from the beginning, and I was rooting for him to get some kind of street/mainstream respect way before "Get By" and all that. The Reflection Eternal album has aged surprisingly well, and Quality was good enough that I still have high hopes for him doing big things. His new album Beautiful Struggle is dropping probably late this summer, a couple months ago a bunch of tracks got leaked and Kweli was mad pissed about it but then dropped a new mixtape anyway. I'm not really feeling the new tracks I've heard so far, so I'm hoping the leaks and pushing the album back meant he went back to do some better shit.

"The Ghetto" f/ Common has a cute flip on that "Moment of Clarity" line: "if lyrics sold then truth be told I'd probably be just as rich and famous as Jay-Z, truthfully I wanna rhyme like Common Sense, next best thing I do a record with Common Sense", tee hee. "Where I'm From" f/ Killer Mike reminds me that I've never heard a MIDI Mafia production that I've liked as far as I know. "Back Up Off Me" is a Kweli/Hi Tek reunion and it's alright, one of Kweli's better recent verses and Hi Tek comes with some of that solid, boring stuff that's got him in good with G Unit lately.

There's some Kanye tracks of course, but they're mostly disappointing. "I Tried" f/ Mary J. Blige has been talked about as the first single, I hope it's not, too much of a "Get By" rehash and Mary doesn't even sound enough like Mary. "Wack Niggas" f/ Kanye West is ok, mostly a Kanye track, and he does that stupid "I push miracle whips" line again. On "Lonely People" f/ LaToiya Williams, Kweli is all "yeah, I like to go out to clubs", and then names a bunch of clubs, like he knows we don't believe him. Kanye jacked "Eleanor Rigby" for the beat and I don't know why he even bothers using samples that definitely aren't going to get cleared, you know they'll have to re-do it as an interpolation to get it on the album.

Actually, the best Kweli stuff lately has been the freestyle. The "Take It Personal" freestyle with Fabolous is hot, although of course Fab steals it, and the freestyle with Game and Black Thought is some heat, best Game verse I've heard so far and even BT sounds alright. I think Kweli's got another collab on Game's album too.