![]() Surrounded by spacey, East-Asian influenced beats, Mos Def goes hard on each track, from the psychedelic energy of “Supermagic” to the Slick Rick-featured “Auditiorium,” storytelling tour-de-force “Life in Marvelous Times” and Black Star reunion joint “History” and turns in his best album since Black on Both Sides. Just moments ago, Yasiin Bey (f/k/a Mos Def) and Preservation released REcstatic a free remix project of Mos’ 2009 fourth solo album, The Ecstatic. ![]() The Ecstatic is, in a way, a return to form tighter album-oriented tracks, consistent backdrop from producers Madlib, Oh No and Dilla and a pleasantly unexpected appearance from Talib Kweli. Q-Tips recent The Renaissance set a pretty high bar for highly evolved 90s rappers returning to claim their post-Obama inheritance.And this improbably impeccable fifth album by Mos Def - aka. Since then, it’s been mainly Hollywood time, Mos coming back every now and then for a guest or two – one of them being a perplexing spot on Kanye’s “Drunk and Hot Girls,” which had fans all around the world scratching their heads. After an incredible start to his very-promising career, he dropped the brilliant, though equally puzzling The New Danger in 2004 and then True Magic, which was just plain bad, in 2006. Or rather, should I say, Mos Def wasn’t the kindest to hip-hop. But far more importantly, it also offers a thrillingly accessible demonstration of hip-hop's limitless creative possibilities to those whose experience of the medium stretches no farther than the occasional random episode of Run's House.Hip-hop wasn’t the kindest to Mos Def in the 2000s. With musical borrowings that range from Banda Black Rio to Selda Bagcan and Fela Kuti to Mary Wells, The Ecstatic is undoubtedly a crate-digger's wet dream. And Slick Rick's immortal guest verses contain more compressed humanity than is to be found in the entire oeuvre of Mos Def's TV tormentor, Christopher Hitchens. Outspoken and even prone to some fairly loony conspiracy theorising, The Ecstatic thankfully does not become such a platform, and is a refined selection of strong tracks, which skilfully tread the balance between tight beats and forthright exclamations. ![]() Mos Def's unhappy recent appearance on US talk show host Bill Maher's Real Time may have given YouTube viewers cause to doubt his political perspicacity, but his analytical skills are beyond reproach on this album. Best Tracks: Auditorium Priority The Embassy History Casa Bey. Mos Def has returned to his roots with consistant flow and amazing beats. Ultimately The Ecstatic is a instant classic album. with Noam Chomsky on remix duties, Pretty Dancer proclaims the survival of the phattest ("Too busy surviving to argue about Darwin, darlin'") and History's emotional reunion with Talib Kweli will have people whose lives were changed by Rawkus's first Soundbombing compilation crying into their port and lemon. Its a short track but carries much weight. It wasn’t just that the music was bad (though it certainly was). His last album, Tru3 Magic, was a complete flop. For a while there it appeared Mos was done with hip-hop forever. The irresistible Quiet Dog is Beyoncé's Single Ladies. The idea of celebrating the act of being alive seems so in line with the vibe of a classic hip-hop show, and Mos Def embodies the joy of the genre as well as anyone. Infused with Middle Eastern strings, prayer calls and desert-epic pipes, these stylistic experiments shape, rather than accessorize the album. But just as his co-headlining appearance with Jack Black in Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind and a sequence of Emmy, Tony, Obie and Golden Globe nomination-winning acting performances seemed to signal the end of his career's MC phase, The Ecstatic blasts it into another dimension. But by the shameful standards Mos Def set for himself, any album with some semblance of effort was bound to be heralded as a return to form, and The Ecstatic. The Ecstatic is clearly influenced by this faith, and perhaps Mos Def’s own indifference to the vacuity of mainstream Western culture. Like many of the golden generation of New York rappers whose rise was tied up with the New York independent label Rawkus, Mos Def seemed to lose his way somewhat after switching to a major.
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