A B-boy in A-town

March 24, Emory University — Midway through his set, socially conscious MC Talib Kweli stood atop a monitor and hollered to the crowd at Emory’s McDonough Field, “Who’s from the ghetto? Make some noise!”

Like a cue from a film, the record stopped and the crowd of 800 or so hushed while a few pre-med students wearing sideways hats played make-believe. Kweli rethought his plea. “Well, who likes hip-hop music?” Cheering ensued.

Kweli — the former MC partner of Mos Def in community-minded duo Black Star turned solo artist turned “underground rapper,” if you believe the Emory promotion staff — was asked to perform a free show to the private school’s students as part of the institution’s annual Dooley’s Week.

Opening acts D.R.E.S. tha Beatnik — CL’s 2002 “Lyricist of the Year” and a regular at Apache Cafe’s “Mic Club” — and old school-minded collective Psyche Origami (think Jurassic 5, minus four) found fierce competition among the 500 free pizzas, 159 dozen doughnuts and three kegs. As the wealth of cuisine dwindled, a few hundred students dispersed. Those remaining slowly gravitated toward the stage, coinciding with Kweli’s emergence.

Kweli skipped the small talk and opened with Black Star’s recognizable “Definition,” letting the music serve as introduction.

Kweli’s 45-minute set was in essence a chronological timeline of his career to date. Blazing through verses with little respite, Kweli covered material from albums Black Star, Reflection Eternal and Quality. Finally Kweli showcased material from his new album, Beautiful Struggle, still being finished and due in a few months, though rough tracks have recently been leaked to the Internet to Kweli’s dismay.

Emory proved a safe venue to test the waters with fresh material. Despite the frisbee throwers and cliques of co-eds dancing in unison, the loyal hundreds closest to the stage ate each rhyme Kweli spat.

“I don’t really know much about this school,” Kweli told CL after the show. “The crowd wasn’t a Kweli crowd, they just wanted a good show. But they showed me love, and I appreciate that.”

Interspersing freestyles to blend old songs, Kweli kept the show spontaneous and the crowd chanting, often rhyming over hometown boy Lil Jon’s beats. “I’m down in the A-T-L with my man D.R.E.S. tha Beatnik/Sweatin’ my shirt off like I was out here at Freaknik,” went one crunk couplet.

Just when Kweli had seemingly exhausted the limited supply of material that Emory students had familiarized in their MP3 libraries, he introduced Jean Grae, a childhood friend from near his hometown of Brooklyn, to step on stage for a few songs and rile the crowd.

“I’ve known [Jean] since I was 14,” Kweli said. “[She is] part of the group Natural Resources and I thought it’d be a good time for her to come out with me and record [on the Beautiful Struggle album].”

Kweli having walked off stage, a commanding chant of “Kweli! Kweli!” lured the MC back for an encore of a storming rendition of Black Star’s “Respiration” before he debuted another new Beautiful Struggle track that sampled the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” (more familiar ground for the crowd).

“You get lazy when you’re just performing to people who know and love your music,” Kweli said. “You gotta mix it up.”

Kweli left the stage sweating and smiling, but not before turning from his DJ to the crowd one last time to deliver some much coveted “street cred” to the faithful hundreds who had stayed past the last keg tap: “Y’all mothafuckas all right, for real.”

music@creativeloafing.com