Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Music news The second coming of Mos Def
Posted by Ben Westhoff on Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 1:00 PM
Mos Def
with Jay Electronica. $32.50. 8 p.m. Fri., Aug. 14. Tabernacle, 152 Luckie St. 404-659-9022. www.tabernacleatl.com.
Mos Def’s latest album, The Ecstatic (Downtown), is a return-to-form hip-hop opus, a simultaneously breezy and substantive fun-house ride that is a lock for critical year-end lists. Featuring beats from folks like J Dilla, Madlib and Oh No (Madlib’s younger brother), it does exactly what a Mos Def album should do — walk the line between old-school romance and modern, frenetic vitality.
It came just in time, too. The middle of the decade was not kind to Mos, who had somehow morphed from hip-hop’s savior into a hack actor and musical dilettante who had forsaken his talents. Even worse, he had become “safe.” Quoth the satirical blog Stuff White People Like, from last year: “He is everything that white people dream about: authentic (‘he’s from Brooklyn!’), funny (‘he was on Chapelle show!’) … an actor (‘he’s in the new Gondry film!’) and not white (‘I don’t see race’).”
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(Image courtesy Downtown)
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