Talib Kweli Promotes College Basketball

Monday, January 9, 2006
By: Michael Ivey

Blacksmith Records label head Talib Kweli recently inked a promotional deal with the Big Ten Conference. The television ad campaign, established through Team Works Media, features Kweli performing in a 3D animated underground club, with basketball highlight monitors spread throughout the scene.

Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany reportedly chose Kweli to be apart of the league’s two year marketing campaign because his "poetry, musical lyrics and rhyme speak to the values of education, effort and literacy." Delany adds, "Newsweek and the New York Times have both singled out Talib as one of the most intelligent lyricists in contemporary music today", a motive Kweli alludes to in the title track of his last album, "The Beautiful Struggle." The second verse begins: "I speak in schools a lot cause they say I’m intelligent/no, is cause I’m dope, if I was wack I’d be irrelevant." The PSA entitled "Welcome to the Big Stage" airs during all nationally and regionally televised Big Ten basketball games, which began January 3rd. Last season Big Ten men’s basketball attracted some 2,255,332 fans, tops in the nation for the 29th consecutive season. Talib Kweli’s new album "Right About Now" is in stores now.

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