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Maybe someday
36
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
54/100Critics
17/100Scholars
Author:
Talib Kweli
Publisher:
MCD
Date:
February 16, 2021
Before Talib Kweli became a world-renowned hip hop artist, he was a Brooklyn kid who liked to cut class, spit rhymes, and wander the streets of Greenwich Village with a motley crew of artists, rappers, and DJs who found hip hop more inspiring than their textbooks (much to the chagrin of the educator parents who had given their son an Afrocentric name in hope of securing for him a more traditional sense of pride and purpose). Kweli's was the first generation to grow up with hip hop as established culture--a genre of music that has expanded to include its own pantheon of heroes, rich history and politics, and distinct worldview. Vibrate Higher illuminates Talib Kweli's upbringing and artistic success, but so too does it give life to hip hop as a political force--one that galvanized the Movement for Black Lives, and serves a continual channel for resistance against the rising tide of white nationalism.
What The Reviewers Say
Rapper Talib Kweli is the latest wordsmith to add memoir to his resume and to the growing body of hip-hop lit with his freshman read, Vibrate Higher: A Rap Story [...] The Brooklyn-raised MC invites readers into his life as a student of hip-hop, Black liberation and Pan-Africanism.
The push-pull between commercial hip-hop, with its frequent emphasis on empty materialism, and Kweli’s message-driven, occasionally preachy and invariably less popular conscious rap is one of the main preoccupations at the heart of the swift, sturdy Vibrate Higher.
Hip-hop musician Kweli recounts his rise through the music industry and shares his thoughts on current events in this outspoken and enthusiastic memoir.
Even readers who share the author’s politics will find their presentation intrusive on what is otherwise such a compelling retrospective of an impressive life.
