Brooklyn rapper Talib Kweli has a talent for summing up ambitious concepts in powerfully concise phrases, whether it’s 2004’s The Beautiful Struggle or 2007’s Eardrum. With the similarly evocative Gutter Rainbows, the self-described “prisoner of consciousness” distills stories of ghetto-shackled blues people and his decade-plus career (“Mr. International”), occasionally turning over the mic to guests like Sean Price and Jean Grae (who kills “Uh Oh” with a coolly ruthless verse). However, the production (from Ski Beatz, 88-Keys, others) adds florid, melodramatic choruses to jazzy boom-bap tracks, blunting the impact of Kweli’s dogged street intellectualism.
