It's a chilly Thursday night in Philadelphia. I dropped some prior arrangements to a last minute invitation to interview Talib Kweli, who's doing some red-eye, twilight recording work. I get there early, park my car in front of the studio, and listen to Ear Drum for the um-teenth time in the last six months as I wait.

The album has played four times, as I fold my second newspaper. I'm down to my last handful of quarters for the City of Brotherly Love's fifteen-minute rate meters, and I'm exhausted. Hip Hop journalism at its most typical. I leave a message with Talib's assistant, and head the 20 blocks home, nearly three and a half hours after I put my temporary rental in park. As I drive, I remember trying to chase Talib down in 2002, when he was touring the States with Rawkus, in the most epic game of phone-tag I'd ever played, over 300 interviews deep. When I finally caught up with him, it was the gratifying kind of interview I miss.

I get home, lose the jacket and start to cue some tapes for transcription. The 'Berry blows up, and Kweli's 10 minutes away, in the midst of a stressful day of his own, and apologetic. "Do you still want to head over?" For Talib Kweli, nearly a dozen of phone interviews, but never a pound later, the question requires no thought.

Fifteen minutes later I'm in The Roots' studio room, sans The Roots, where Talib and songstress Res are catching up, discussing the wave of viral web talk garnered from "Industry Diary," which leaked last week [click to listen]. A few jokes and stories later, Res is monstrously crooning vocals that sound like Power Pop on acid; light subject matter with an eerie nuance. The Idle Warship is launching, and we ain't heard shit yet.

Talib's listening to her various edits of the vocals, but not actively. With a borrowed pen and tablet, he's scribbling rhymes, mumbling uniquely-Kweli cadences to himself. Less than five minutes later, he looks up, glances at me, we finally meet, and he says he's ready to talk. "You need to finish what you're working on?" I ask. "I just did," he says.

Sporting designer aviator glasses, Talib Kweli eats a chicken cheese-steak as we discuss politics, Blacksmith and this breaking side-project, Idle Warship, for HipHopDX. The whole affair takes 20 minutes, tops. The questions are answered, jokes are exchanged, and one emcee that's forever worth his weight - (and any wait) goes back to work.

HipHopDX: Last week, you wrote an open letter in support of presidential candidate Barack Obama. You weren’t pushing an opinion on too many people, but said simply you used to be apathetic to the political world, but were inspired. We don’t see these actions in Hip Hop too often – as least in that format. What was the reaction like?
Talib Kweli: The people who pay that much attention to that kind of stuff are really adamant about their opinion. So I got strong reactions. [The letter] really came from a sense of family. I sense that the people who reacted negatively to it don’t deal with the same type of family situation that I deal with. Whether they have children my age who are going through what they’re going through, or whether it’s the people they come from. I’m not ashamed to say that my family, my peoples was very involved in my decision to write that. They pushed me to write – not that, but they pushed me to check out Barack Obama, to see what he was really about. My brother made it part of his life. He’s on the campaign trail. For my brother to do that…he felt the same way that I do about politics. My brother still voted, but when we have political discussions, he agreed [only he] still votes. For him to go that hard, it made me evaluate it. I’ve seen Barack do different things that I haven’t seen politicians with electability do. That just made me feel like it’s that time for me to support this man. I don’t have to support the system just ‘cause I support Obama.

DX: You were one of the first people in Hip Hop to even mention that name on “Say Something.” People who followed your lyrics looked into things. Last week, on NPR some analysts were saying that in the summer, when Ear Drum released, Obama wasn’t even perceived as a leading candidate. What kind of reaction did you get back then from that endorsement? Did people say anything to you about looking further into him? Was that happening?
TK: I think there was an awareness to who he was by the time I said his name – in the Hip Hop community. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have had an impact. His name just sounds good in a rhyme. I’ll always maintain that. That’s all it was at the moment. I wasn’t planning on…there wasn’t enough stuff that he had done that I had seen with my own experience to make me be like, “Okay, I’ll support this dude.” I was impressed with him, I liked him, but not enough to be like, “Other people should too.”

DX: As an artist and entrepreneur, are there any meaningful policies at stake in this election to you?
TK: I think [the election] will effect creative output, slightly. I think the Bush Administration has definitely effected creative output in peoples’ decisions in terms of what they make songs about. Other than that, the presidential office is still symbolic. Barack Obama can become an important symbol. We have a system of checks and balances that makes it not function sometimes. I’m not saying that bad or disparaging, but I’m saying human error always exists. I put more faith in it as a symbol of changing peoples’ lives. Continued on page 2 »