Talib Kweli broke into the rap game with childhood friend Mos Def as the hip-hop staple Black Star. And now on his second solo album, The Beautiful Struggle, he proves once again that he is a true poet in the world of hip-hop.

While the radio is filled with rap songs about bitches and hos, The Beautiful Struggle discusses things of far greater importance: orphans of the AIDS epidemic and, of course, a little bit of the thug life. Now don’t think I can actually understand every word Talib spits well enough to make this assertion. No—I just read the lyrics in the liner notes, a pretty rare thing to be able to do with a hip-hop album. But with words of this quality put together, I would say it was certainly fitting.

On top of being genuinely poetic, this album is the standard who’s who of hip-hop, featuring the talents of Pharrell Williams, Mary J. Blige, Faith Evans, and Common, among others. So what happens when you put all this together? A pretty damn good album. And, predictably, sampling The Police’s “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” on “Around My Way” just made me like the album even more. The lack of talking in between songs didn’t hurt either. So if it’s an intelligent hip-hop record you’re after, The Beautiful Struggle delivers.