Just weeks removed from the release of his critically-hailed and sonically adventurous major-label debut album, Is He Real?, DMV area rapper IDK stopped by the Uproxx offices to sit down with People’s Party With Talib Kweli to discuss his new music, working with hip-hop legends like Del The Funky Homosapien, MF Doom, and Pusha T, and the influence of Kanye West on a young generation of rappers who now must reconcile their admiration for their hero with his controversial stances, including his relationship with Donald Trump.
“I feel like y’all have a different understanding ’cause y’all are a post-Kanye generation,” Kweli says, referring to Kanye’s status as one of the first rappers to cross the imagined “underground/mainstream” divide in the early 2000s. “What’s crazy is how many similarities we have,” IDK agrees. “I can see a lot of the stuff he sees, not even on purpose.” He also tells about how he met Kanye at the studio with 88 Keys and wound up playing with Rubik’s cubes.
However, Kweli just has to know how IDK feels about Kanye’s more divisive moves of late, saying, “His embrace of Trump was very hard for me to stomach… your perspective has gotta be different.” “He raised a lot of us, musically,” IDK replies. “I kinda understood what he was trying to do, I just don’t think he executed it in a way where everyone could comprehend it.”
People’s Party With Talib Kweli is a weekly interview show hosted by hip-hop legend Talib Kweli. The show features big-name guests exploring hip-hop, culture, and politics. Subscribe to People’s Party on Apple Music, Spotify, and Uproxx Video on Youtube.