Black Snake Moan

Two reasons to watch for Talib Kweli's latest project, Idle Warship:Res and Graph Nobel.


The two genre-bending female artists have revolutionized music (at least for me) over the past decade. First, there was Philly-based Res' hit record How I Do (Geffen, 2001) which was exclusively written by Graph and "discovered" by Santogold. Then there's the fact that both women have struggled through industry bullshit to keep putting out good music. Even though How I Do was critically acclaimed enough to become an indie hit, it suffered from label mismanagement and didn't get proper marketing or radio airplay. Last spring, Res released her second album, the self-written Black.Girls.Rock, through the online music service Scocap on her myspace page.

After moving from her hometown of Toronto to Los Angeles, Graph has been in the studio with everyone from Dr. Dre to MobbDeep, but still hasn't been able to release her own album. Instead, she teases her fans with some of her best music that's only available through live streams on Imeem, like these goodies I've been fawning over for almost a year:







So while it's still weird as hell to see Kweli in a sexually explicit club joint like Black Snake Moan, it's fucking great for Black music that three artists are redefining the boundaries of rock, hip-hip and soul. Not to mention that the publicity is going to great for Graph and Res:



Idle Warship "Black Snake Moan" from The ICU on Vimeo.