"Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it" is a common admonition, but Black Star's Mos Def (born Dante Beze) and Talib Kweli never wished for the reality that is now their own. Just one year ago, their faces were barely discernible from any other young black bohemians of downtown Brooklyn, New York. They could walk down the street without being recognized. They were often at home to answer the phone when it rang. And once a month, they happily performed for free before their small but loyal fan base at Nkiru Books on St. Marks Place. There were no cell phones. No groupies. No guest lists. No drama. Everything was, as the old-schoolers say, everything. But that was a year ago.

Nowadays, hip-hop's latest darlings are sitting -- not standing -- on top of the world. They're sitting because they're tired of dealing with the headaches that accompany blowing up. Tired of doing shows. Tired of interviews. Tired of smiling for cameras. Tired of being away from home, their families and children. Just tired. The only thing they're not tired of, it seems, is making music, which would explain why they're holed up in Battery Recording Studios at 3 a.m., just one night after their return to New York from Los Angeles, where they celebrated the release of their innovative debut LP, Mos Def & Talib Kweli are Black Star (Rawkus).

Not wanting to conduct yet another interview, Kweli, 22, avoids the task entirely by working methodically in the control room of Studio A, guiding the engineer and DJ Hi Tek as they master "Beautiful," a splendid rap ballad on which the pair collaborated with Mary J. Blige. Always the charmer, however, Mos, 24, puts his own spin on the interview process in a cozy backroom lounge where he proceeds to improvise for hours on a bass guitar, singing slave songs that his father, also a musician, taught him as a child.

"This might possibly be one of my last interviews," Mos mumbles into the phone from home a week later. "Hip-hop journalism and journalism as a whole is a bit more carnivorous than I imagined," he adds with a tinge of disappointment in his voice. "It seems like writers are more interested in making themselves look good than the artists. They take every interview as an opportunity to enhance their own mystique as a writer. They want the reader to be as interested in them as they are in the artist.

"I mean, it happens in all of journalism, but in hip-hop journalism in particular, because hip-hop is surrounded by a relentlessly competitive energy," he laments. "The clothing companies that dress the artists are competing with each other -- the record companies ... the magazines ... the artists ... the artists' girlfriends ... the accountants ... the jewelers, even the fans are competing with each other." After pausing for breath, Mos confides, "It would be comical if it wasn't so real."

It would also be comical listening to Mos complain like this, if he didn't know what he was talking about. Prior to ruling the rap charts with Black Star's hit single, "Definition," Mos earned his keep as an actor, landing roles on The Cosby Mysteries and a Visa commercial with Deion Sanders. Having observed his pal Bill Cosby's personal drama unfold in the public eye last year, Mos is no stranger to the vices of the media, which explains the obvious anxiety he feels about his newfound celebrity.

Kweli, on the other hand, is a media virgin, and while the former NYU undergrad understands where his rhyme partner is coming from, he doesn't exactly share the same opinion. "I'm not in any way at the point where I'm completely done with interviews," says Kweli, "but I am being more selective about who I let interview me -- if I want [hip-hop] to be represented properly, then I have to represent [hip-hop] properly. I don't want people to get confused by Mos' statements because me and Dante are very concerned about reaching people, but when we reach people through the media our statements often get corrupted."

Such was the case with the critics' response to "Definition," argues Kweli. "People criticized us for jacking the 'Definition' beat, but they didn't even look at what we did with it -- we expanded it into a whole composition with parts one and two, like jazz musicians do. But that doesn't matter because they only want to see drama, they want to see tension and it's very frustrating for me because it's my first time out."

Success in the music industry does not come without sacrificing substantial amounts of pride and privacy, but these two are hell-bent on finding a way around that. Like all artists, Mos and Kweli are extremely proud of their music because they pour so much of themselves into it. But as a result the pair tend to perceive criticism as unwarranted attacks on their characters. Indeed, Mos Def and Talib Kweli are struggling to let their public and private personas reside in the same body, as revealed by Mos in Black Star's liner notes: "This has been an emotional year. A lot of joy and tears. I ain't perfect at all -- I'm still trying to get this thing down. Please know that my intentions are pure. It's just my application that I'm working on."

As for the future of Black Star, their growing fame and their relationship with the media, Mos emphasizes that hip-hop is not the same as jazz or instrumental music, "where the messages are more difficult to extract. Hip-hop is much more direct, so doing interviews just seems redundant to me. I don't wanna come off like a prima donna," he says, "but the reason why I make records is because I have something to communicate, and the something that I have to communicate is very clearly stated in [the music]. If people want to know how I think and what I feel, just listen to my music."

MARGEAUX WATSON
(October 28, 1998)