#67, “Get By,” Talib Kweli (2002)

150 Favorite Songs: #67, “Get By,” Talib Kweli (2002)

There aren’t any Kanye songs on this list. The first time I started this project, back in 2010, there were four. I can’t listen to him anymore, though, so they’re not really favorites at this point. They’re songs I used to love.

But when Kanye was good, which he often was, he made downright thrilling music. He did it as a solo artist, on collaborations, and, especially when he was young and hungry, as a producer for other artists. “Get By” is my favorite of those songs. It’s a perfect, joyful, cacophonous explosion that drew from samples and original ideas and another rapper’s voice to help make something special.

By the time “Get By” came out in 2002, Talib Kweli had been on the edges of stardom for a long time. He wasn’t exactly famous himself, or at least he wasn’t someone who was making hit records. He was best known as the junior partner to Mos Def in Black Star, a good rapper with an uncommon gift for diction and enunciation in his work but not the dual threat that his tag-team partner was, and a little too specific in what he did on the mic to break through to a mass audience. (Jay Z, the year after “Get By” was released, referenced that directly, claiming on “Moment of Clarity” that “if skills sold, truth be told, i’d probably be, lyrically, talib kweli,” which is the sort of nice shout-out that probably also made him wish he could pay his rent with a Jay Z shout out.) But for one brief moment, Kweli had everything he needed—a young, hungry producer who hadn’t yet started his career on the mic giving him a perfect track, a message that was more fun than the lectures he sometimes recorded without compromising his vision, a bass line and keyboard hook that don’t quit, and a gospel vibe that he sounded invigorated by.

It makes sense that Kweli wasn’t the first pick to get this beat. Kanye had played it for him in the studio and Kweli went nuts for it, but he couldn’t have it—Mariah Carey had dibs, and Pharoahe Monch had a hold on it if it didn’t go to her. But after a few weeks, neither of them made a clear plan for it, and Kweli basically “harassed” (his word) him into letting him do the track. It became his biggest hit, the first and only time he really sniffed mainstream success as a solo artist.

What’s striking about “Get By” to me is the dichotomy between the verses and the chorus. The verses are pretty good, but standard Kweli stuff—a mix of sort of cringe-y pop culture references (“we go through episodes too / like attack of the clones”; “i paint a picture with a pen like norman mailer”) and hectoring raps about the need to elevate beyond commercial goals (“we survivalists turned to consumers”; “TV got us reaching for stars / not the ones between venus and mars / but the ones that be reading for parts”). It’s probably the first song in the history of the Hot 100 chart to reference, by name, “penis enlargers.” (Kweli thinks it’s a shame that some people think that will make them feel complete, instead of choosing to love themselves.) But then there’s the chorus.

It’s such a strong hook that it breaks into the verses a few times—the words “just to get by, just to get by,” rapped in a steady, musical rhythm—before the explosion when it fully rolls around. It’s piano and stuttering drums and a distant Nina Simone sample and a miniature gospel choir singing about waking up feeling brand new, reinventing yourself to soberly find a new way to get by, with ooo’s and hey’s and if you can listen to it without feeling like jumping up feeling your highs and your lows in your soul, well, you’re made of sterner stuff than I am.

Kweli never touched the heights of “Get By” again, and Kanye became the biggest star in the world for a long while, and then a Nazi for a little while after that. Kweli managed to avoid any serious controversy, though if I recall he was a big asshole on Twitter to a lot of women over the years. But flawed people can make something beautiful, and “Get By” is that. Sometimes, you only get one, but we only need one, so it all works out.