The Hip Hop artist Yasiin Bey had previously announced a new album Black Star, with his duo Talib Kweli, and the American DJ Madlib. Bey revealed: “New Black Star with Madlib, Talib Kweli, Yasiin, coming soon!” However, Talib Kweli in an interview with HipHopDX said that the album is not yet confirmed and it just “might happen.”
Kweli, who was surprised by Bey’s announcement of the album, said: “I found out on the internet the same way y’all did,” he added. “We’ve been talking about doing an album with Madlib for years. That’s been an idea we’ve had for so long, but for him to make that announcement … It’s not like we discussed it and said, ‘Ok, we’re going to announce it.’”
However, Kweli added that there’s good chance that the album is indeed going to happen. “It’s an idea we have been discussing for a long time, now we just gotta make it happen.”
Talib Kweli has also penned an Op-Ed on White Nationalists, titled titled “Free Speech or Die?”. In his letter, he talks about “paradox of self-victimization by the alt-right.”, and references nationalist Jeremy Christian, who in the name of defending his freedom of speech, allegedly murdered people on a train in Portland. “What today’s right-wing free speech advocates are truly advocating is for Nazis, the KKK, and other white supremacist organizations and sympathizers to have additional, special rights the rest of us do not have: the right to say whatever they want without dissent, argument, pushback, or consequence,” He wrote.
He added: “It doesn’t matter if the speaker who supports ethno-states and hates diversity is polite. It doesn’t matter how nicely someone dresses when they claim that diversity is the cause of some imagined white genocide. These are Nazi ideals, and we have already seen what happens when Nazi ideals are normalized and given a platform. Hating a person for how they were born is illogical and hateful, and hate does not always deserve a debate.”
Read the full Op-Ed here: Free Speech or Die?
Photo Credit: Alyssa Fried
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