Album Reviews

Train of Thought | Reflection Eternal

By Nirav ⋅ July 21, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

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Talib Kweli’s first full length album without Mos Def is by far his best work to date. Though he’s grown insurmountably over the last several years, this album has been engraved into the minds of hip hop enthusiasts and taken precedence of everything he has done and will do. It’s what Illmatic (1994) was to Nas, what Reasonable Doubt (1996) was to Jay-Z, and what Born To Do It (2001) was to Craig David. It’s well produced (DJ Hi-Tek), its raw, and it’s just damn good music!

For anyone that has liked a song by Talib Kweli or bought an album of his, I would recommend you go out and purchase this right now. He is motivational, he is lyrical, and he is on point. Talib Kweli is simply one of the best!

Train of Thought (2000) is instrumental to Talib Kweli’s foundation as an emcee and as an artist. To me, this albums brings together a few different feelings to me before I start it on my playlist. Like any personal favorite, it hast the ability to do that due to the memories and emotions I was going through when I first heard it. For me, those emotions include:

• Empathy for life. It’s easy to understand personal suffering because it relates to you, but its a little more difficult to feel other’s suffering unless it vibes with your own suffering. With this album, I felt the empathy form from the way Kweli breaks down life and death in the city and the suffering that one incurs while experiencing life. And it’s not pertaining to one person, but all individuals. Listen to the audio track above entitled Good Mourning and also be sure to check out Four Women. While listening to Four Women, picture your own mother or grandmother.
• Yearning for a relationship. In Love Language, Kweli starts with a story of all relationships: initial fright, flirtation, getting to know one another, getting comfortable, expressing love, small fights, big fights, and then breakdowns. For me and probably for all, that’s exactly how my past relationships went. And the way he tells it, it brings back all the old good memories of the women in my life. On top of that, he describes the meanings of love in all its forms. And how love itself has so many meanings that it gets misinterpreted. You can’t help but get in the mood to have a relationship or for those who already are in one, make it stronger.
• Motivation to move. I’m not talking simply from his single Move Something, I’m talking about the feeling I get to get up and do something real in life. Kweli has a way through his comfortable flow + purposeful lyrics that just gets you to agree with him. And once he has that trust in you, he puts in this dose of motivation that get you sparked to simply do something.

Though I could express several more, those are the strongest feelings I can put down on paper. And those feelings stay with you everytime you play a track from your favorite album(s). That is why it’s been hard for people to say Talib Kweli has grown or gotten better since this album. Hip hoppers argue this is his best album up to date (just like me!) and that it’s hard for him to ever topple this. So each of Kweli’s new albums is always being compared to Train of Thought. Talib responded to this in an interview with MTV:

“I think the logic of that statement,” he continued, “is that people get caught up in a time and what that song represents to them at the time they hear it. And nothing I’m gonna do after that is going to match up to that time period, because they can’t get that back. So I have to realize that when I make music, that time is never gonna be back to them. But you gonna get new fans all the time. I got fans that became fans at Black Star, I got new fans at Reflection, new fans at Quality, new fans at The Beautiful Struggle, new fans at Liberation. I got fans of mine who never heard of me [before] and like ‘Hot Thing’ as the first thing from me. So you’re always gonna get new fans, but I just got to remember I have to maintain who I am.

Do yourself a musical favor regardless of whether you like/dislike hip hop music and buy/rent/”borrow” this album. Once in your hands, zone out and listen to it. It will be one of the best treats you can give to your mind and soul, I promise.

Tags: hip hop