Talib Kweli Said JAY-Z Wasn't Accepted By Conscious Crowd Until Kanye

Talib Kweli stopped by Viceland's Desus & Mero last night to promote his new album Radio Silence and talk about a slew of topics.

One of the more interesting parts of the interview is when the Brooklyn rapper explained that JAY-Z was once an outsider among the conscious rap crowd, but didn't know it until he started working with Kanye West.

If you remember, after Jay started working with Ye, he started popping up on Dead Prez records and got on songs with Mos Def. Hov even rocked a Che Guevera shirt during his 2001 MTV Unplugged performance just like a conscious rapper would.

"Jay sees himself as one of us, and he realized the rest of the world wasn't seeing him like that," said Talib. "I think Kanye's relationship with me absolutely made Jay-Z pay more attention to me ... At that point, Jay-Z was trusting Kanye a lot. Kanye was going back and forth from working with people like me and Mos to Jay, Beanie Sigel and Cam'ron. He was connecting those worlds."

"I feel like Kanye is a father of a generation," Talib explained. "I feel like an artist like Drake, who is now a father of a generation, learned from Kanye. Drake walked a line very [thin line] between just being himself, being sensitive and not being hood but then being hood if I feel like it."