When I first got into radio in college, my appreciation for musical genres was very limited; my narrow-minded view included an irrational hate for hip hop (although I recently discovered that I really liked Kanye West’s Golddigger prior to the start of the school year). Well, the thing about CKDJ – the radio station we as students were tasked to run – was that its format was Alternative and Hip Hop. I was pretty happy about the Alternative part, but not really sold on the Hip Hop (obviously).
I quickly learned to really love a lot of the hip hop songs, and I identified several different tracks as stand-outs compared to others. One of those stand-out tracks was Listen by Talib Kweli. I’m not very good at keeping tabs of some of the artists I discovered via CKDJ, but I recently learned from exclaim.ca that Talib has a new album coming out. Today, actually!
I don’t know if the tracks will be taken down once the album is officially released, but as I write this (9pm Monday night) the entire album is on Talib’s myspace for your streaming enjoyment. The album is called Gutter Rainbows and is out January 25th, 2011!
Alternative Airwaves 