Hi, I am french so excuse my bad english.
I listen to rap music for 10 years now, and had my band for 5 years : yeah, we never became real stars so.. 5 years was enough :p
Mr Talib Kweli is at this time my favourite rapper, I find in his music something that, to me, really defines hip hop and rap music : something to say, a message from the street or from a lot of people in it, with enough poetry and style to be listen to. I would say Talib is a fine technician, too, because a lot of rapper cannot test with his flow, but...
But we feel in his albums that this technique has limit, that on a record it is okay to do that, he can breathe when he wants, but in a live it seems impossible. I saw the Dave Chapelle show, with Mos Def, Common, Talib, Kanye West, etc, and Talib was.. waow! a big rapper, but we regularly feel at the end that he had no voice enough to sing a long time using his style.
And finally for my comment, this "live at the shrine" is not as good as I would expected from him, so for me Talib Kweli is a recordman, but not a liveman at this time. But maybe he can progress beyong the real and became a really enormous rapper on both scene and albums...? who knows..
My feeling is that in this live we saw a rapper alone, sometimes running after the beat, in a little place where people are just present, but not a really good hot public and not a really great show. I would have put two stars and a half on my note if it was possible, but between two and three stars it will be two for this live.
But Talib Kweli IS one of the biggest rapper today I think, listen to some of his albums it will hit you!
