Talib Kweli reveals the rap legend who told Kanye West to support Donald Trump
Brooklyn emcee Talib Kweli worked extensively with Kanye West during the early 2000s, and the two were good friends for many years. West even produced much of his 2002 album, Quality. Furthermore, Kweli appeared on Kanye’s critically acclaimed debut, College Dropout.
However, the two have had various encounters since 2004, and during one of their interactions, West told Kweli that another legendary hip-hop producer influenced him to support Donald Trump and the Republican party in 2016.
West mentioned Kweli multiple times during an appearance on the Drink Champs podcast with Noreaga and DJ EFN in 2022. Still, after the interview, Kweli took to X (formerly Twitter) to tell some previously unheard stories about the Beautiful Struggle creator.
Kweli took some time to detail his most recent encounters with the Donda star and refuted some of the claims made in the viral interview. Writing a lengthy post, Kweli began, “So apparently @kanyewest wants me to tell y’all about the last couple of times we hung out. Ok, here’s pics from the last couple of times we hung out. The first is from last year, the second is from just last month. In these hang-out sessions, many things happened.”
In his post, Kweli insisted that it was “weird” to see his former friend and collaborator taking so many shots at him during an interview and provided a list of their meetups. The Quality creator stated that it took by by surprise as, earlier that year, Kanye allegedly confided in him about his “severe drinking problem.” Furthermore, Kweli asserted that it was bizarre to hear West declaring his love for Trump as, behind-the-scenes, the producer and told him he was advised to support Trump.
Opening up about what Kanye told him privately, Kweli explained to his followers, “Kanye privately told me that he no longer supports Trump but then continued to publicly show support for Trump.” The Black Star rapper continued, “He blamed his support for Trump on Rick Rubin. He also said that Rick Rubin is the one who told him to link with Candace Owens. I thought it was weird for him to pass the buck like that.”
In response to Kanye’s opinion that the Chicago emcee, Common, is “a thousand times better rapper than” him, Kweli joked that the ‘Gold Digger’ rhymer, who heard his unreleased Black Star album, never expressed those thoughts in person.
Recalling their last meeting for fans, Kweli detailed, “When I saw him on my birthday at Dave [Chappelle]’s show, just last month, he was warm and gracious…I did, however, have mass Brooklyn dudes with classic baseball caps with me that day tho, so maybe he wanted to say he didn’t like my raps but chose not to do to that.”
While Kweli claimed that he wasn’t bothered by “the disrespect of [his] rhyme skills,” he said that he would never side with Kanye’s stance on Trump and MAGA. “Kanye is an amazing artist, but MAGA is terrorism,” he wrote. “January 6th proved that. No amount of deflection changes that fact.”
Since the debacle between Kanye and Kweli occurred, not only has West disappeared and become elusive, but Donald Trump has also become president-elect.