Legendary rapper Talib Kweli has dropped a free album, racily and appropriately titled Fuck The Money. It’s a project he’s been working on for some time. When we interviewed him earlier this year, he had this to say about it:
“It’s more experimental, and more in tune with things that are going on now. The reason why I want to drop it for free is because I don’t want to hassle fans to pay for that. The lesson I’ve learnt from my career is, fans have a certain experience with the music I put out for sale, and when they buy it, they buy it with the promise of getting that experience. So if I’m gonna try something different, I want to give it to them for free and let them decide whether or not they wanna support it, rather than try to market and promote a sound that they might not like. There’s young producers’ sounds that I like, that I wanna experiment with as an artist, but I can’t try to push that down my fans’ throats. When I’m promoting an album, I’m essentially trying to push it down your throat.”
The album is available as a free download on his website kweliclub.com, or you can listen right here. “Y’all love free shit,” he commented on Twitter, after seeing that it had been downloaded more than a million times in just a few days.
The album comes only weeks after his recent compilation releas, Train of Thought: Lost Lyrics, Rare Releases & Beautiful B-Sides Vol. 1, which also features previously unheard collabs with Killer Mike, Mos Def and more.
The notion of releasing music for free is a really interesting one for many artists, and an idea that Kweli has spoken about on many occasions. “People don’t buy music, they’d rather stream and pay money to streaming companies,” he said in a recent interview on Real Time With Bill Maher (see below). “It’s convenient. As horrible as it is, it’s my responsibility to do something about it. It’s not on the consumer to do something about the new business model.”
Fuck The Money tracklist:
1. Gratitude
2. Leslie Nope
3. Nice Things
4. Echoes (Ft. Miguel & Patrick Stump)
5. Fuck The Money (Ft. Cassper Nyovest)
6. Fall Back (Ft. Styles P & Nire)
7. He Said She Said
8. Butterfly (Ft. Steffanie Christi’an)
9. Baby Girl (Ft. Kendra Ross)
10. The Venetian (Ft. NIKO IS & Ab-Soul)
11. Money Good
Kweli will be visiting Australia this October for Soulfest, where he’ll be performing both as a solo artist, and alongside Mos Def as Black Star. Full details here.