Really, you should be listening to music every day, but thanks to Twitter, Monday has become the best day of the week to discover new songs, show some love to the tune currently dominating your iPod playlist and quietly judge the listening habits of your closest friends. Yes, it's #MusicMonday, one of Twitter's most enduring trending topics. Hence "MTV News' #MusicMonday," a weekly look at the songs we are currently crushing on.
This week, Talib Kweli makes it rain in his own unique way.
Ever since he first made a name for himself as one half of Black Star, Talib Kweli has had an unusual career as one of the most underrated and under-appreciated rappers in the hip-hop game. Kweli possesses a unique flow that breezily jumps from woozy, hallucinatory streams of thought to biting, intense spit wars.
Following the underground buzz surrounding the Black Star album (where he split time with Mos Def), Kweli released his first solo album Quality in 2002. It scored both critical and commercial success thanks to Kweli's stellar flow and the excellent Kanye West-produced single "Get By." He spent the rest of the decade dropping excellent-but-ignored albums both by himself (2007's Eardrum was especially strong) and as a collaborator (his 2007 Madlib tag-team Liberation and the 2010 team-up with DJ Hi-Tek Revolutions Per Minute are both instant classics).
Kweli is about to drop his latest solo album Gutter Rainbows, another killer slab of lyricism that features some excellent beats from a batch of under-the-radar producers (including Ski Beatz, Marco Polo and 88-Keys). The first single, "Cold Rain," is a perfect distillation of Kweli's approach to hip-hop, equal parts playful and exquisitely executed.
What's your #MusicMonday jam? Let us know in the comments!
