Around this time he also contributed to the Scritti Politti album Anomie & Bonhomie and Rawkus compilations Lyricist Lounge and Soundbombing.Īfter the collapse of Rawkus, he signed to Interscope/ Geffen Records, which released his second solo album The New Danger in 2004. Mos Def released his solo debut album Black on Both Sides in 1999, also through Rawkus. Mostly produced by Hi-Tek, the album featured the hit singles, "Respiration" and "Definition", which would go on to be featured in VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of Hip-Hop. They released an album, Mos Def & Talib Kweli are Black Star, in 1998. Mos Def signed with Rawkus Records and formed the group Black Star with Talib Kweli. In 1996, Mos Def emerged as a solo artist and worked with De La Soul and Da Bush Babees, before he released his own first single, "Universal Magnetic". He is friends with Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest. At 19, he took his shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith. While his father was initially a member of the Nation of Islam and later an active member in the community of Imam Warith Deen Mohammed, who merged into mainstream Sunni Islam from the Nation, Mos Def was not exposed to Islam until the age of 13. He was raised by his mother in Brooklyn his father lived in New Jersey. He was born Dante Terrell Smith in Brooklyn, New York City, the son of Sheron Smith and Abdul Rahman. Mos Def has also been active in several social and political causes. Since the early 2000s, Mos Def has become an actor with roles in films Something the Lord Made, Next Day Air, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 16 Blocks, Be Kind Rewind, The Italian Job, and his portrayal of Brother Sam in the American drama series Dexter. As a solo artist he has released the albums Black on Both Sides in 1999, The New Danger in 2004, True Magic in 2006, and The Ecstatic in 2009. He was a major force in late 1990s underground hip hop while with Rawkus Records. ![]() With Talib Kweli, he formed the duo Black Star, which released the album Black Star in 1998. He started his hip hop career in a group called Urban Thermo Dynamics, after which he appeared on albums by Da Bush Babees and De La Soul. Mos Defĭante Terrell Smith (born December 11, 1973), better known by the stage names Mos Def / m o s d f / and Yasiin Bey / j æ s i n b e /, is an American actor and hip hop recording artist from Brooklyn, New York City, New York. Find highlights from the album after the break.From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Sadly, after strong reviews and an obligatory loss to Eminem at the Grammys, The Ecstatic receded from the cultural memory bank. The contribution of all three guests–Slick Rick, Talib Kweli and, on the brilliantly inscrutable “Roses”, Georgia Anne Muldrow–is immense. Ten of the sixteen tracks fall under three minutes, and each one bleeds cohesively into the next: no filler interrupts. Like Madlib and MF DOOM with Madvillainy, Mos Def and his producers (one of whom, coincidentally, is Madlib) create with The Ecstatic a through-composed, radio-unfriendly treasure of underground hip hop. His lyrics solidify that impression: in each word, equal weight is placed on sound and meaning and the most evocative lines often are the most oblique. Permeating the mix are Mos Def’s raps, chants, scats, riffs, mumbles, yells and croons–a performance that is slam poetry as much as it is traditional hip hop. R&B, Spanish and Middle Eastern music, rock, '60s film soundtracks and other miscellanea form an ever-morphing soundscape. On The Ecstatic, production veers in wild and unusual directions, in defiance of pop clichés and pat verse-chorus templates. Mos Def has never been predictable enough for fame. Yet the newest of those releases, 2009’s The Ecstatic, is something rarer and better than a savior album: it is a mature work by a uniquely talented artist. ![]() ![]() Roughly sixteen years later, Mos Def (now Yasiin Bey) is more actor and activist than musician, and his three LPs in the interim dynamited all hopes that he would “save” his genre. His distinctive rapping style–loose, jazzy, partly sung–and his intelligent, expressive lyrics put him solidly at hip hop’s forefront. In the late ‘90s, two now-classic albums made Mos Def a star.
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