I can't be certain for sure, but Party Robot, the debut mixtape from Talib Kweli's electro-dance side project Idle Warship, feels less like a mixtape than a scrapped album. The mixtape (album?) was quietly released (buried?) last month with little fanfare; you can download it for free here.
Talib Kweli, more than his peers, understands how to please his all factions of his widespread fanbase with targeted projects. To stave off backlash against his commercial album Eardrum, for instance, he released a free mixtape with backpack icon Madlib, placating his underground fans. Idle Warship, though, is an unwelcome expansion, an apparent attempt to cash in on the wave of recent hipster rap. Or maybe he just saw Common dance with a robot and got jealous. Either way, over clunky booty-dance beats and jams that sound like rejected Kid Sister demos, Kweli raps about dancing, sex and robots (about in that order), letting a pair of lifeless, Nina Sky-ish R&B singers carry most of the weight for him. Kweli's fleeting, infrequent verses could have been grafted onto these songs from leftover demos, but Party Robot doesn't feel like a mixtapeit definitely feels like a misguided album from a dead-on-arrival side project. I wouldn't expect to hear too much from Idle Warship in the future.
