***1/2 Mos Def & Talib Kweli are Black Star

BLACK STAR

(Rawkus)

After heading up Native Tongues, a loose affiliation of consciousness-raising hip-hop artists, for almost a decade, A Tribe Called Quest have announced their intention to call it quits. But the spirit of Quest lives on in one of hip-hop's most impressive debuts of the year, Black Star. Impressive solo MCs in their own right, Mos Def and Talib Kweli have been dropping cameos and singles for more than a year now. As a team they merge heart, humor, and intellect with poetic wordplay that questions the values and standards of mainstream hip-hop in America. Using the ideas of Marcus Garvey as their guiding principal, the duo flow over deep grooves remarkably free of recognizable samples. The result is heavy enough to move serious hip-hop heads and funky enough to fuel a house party, even as Def and Kweli get bookish and paraphrase Toni Morrison on the status of black people: "Not strong, only aggressive/Not free, we only licensed/Not compassionate, only polite/Not good, but well behaved/Chasin' after death so we could call ourselves brave/Still livin' like mental slaves."

-- Michael Endelman