The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #250

#250: "Get By" (2002) - Talib Kweli

With the duo Black Star, rapper Talib Kweli--and rapper-turned actor Mos Def--made one critically-acclaimed album and then split. Since, Kweli has been a critic's darling because of the depth of the content of his verses, focusing as they do on inner-city life and politics. Kweli, though, never caught on with the mainstream, one reason being his honest, tough, often-bleak lyrics that rarely glamorize the thug or playa lifestyle; another reason--and I this one's much more telling--is that he's not had a great producer or a great tune to rap around. However, this isn't the case with "Get By," by far the best record of Kweli's career.

Kanye West--early in his professional career--devises one of his production jobs, starting the song with a simple bass groove, followed by a woman--I don't know who she is, but she's fantastic--singing in an African (Swahili?) dialect--and then Kanye lays on (what sounds like a) live drum track, loops a jazz piano loop, and throws down some double-time handclaps, all three (drum, piano, handclap) working together to form one of the best polyrhythmic tracks of the past decade. On top of this early West masterwork (as great as anything Wilson or Spector put on wax), Kweli drops the best lyrics of his career, offering reasons--though not excusing nor apologizing for--destructive inner-city lifestyles and proffering love, unconditional, for his brethren, for he understands that if they have something to live for, a dream to realize, and someone to show them love, that they can do more than do just what it takes just to get by.

"This morning, I woke up, feeling brand new, I jumped up, feeling my highs, my lows, and my soul, and my goals, just to stop smoking, and stop drinking, I've got my reasons, just to get by."

Kweli even namedrops John Lennon here, and quotes him, too, and I think Lennon would've approved, for they--Lennon and Kweli--both dreamed and imagined a day when there was no need for greed or hunger or selling crack to your own.