#Mos def the ecstatic sample full

He knocks it out of the park with History with Blackstar partner Talib Kewli. ∺uditiorium with Slick Rick is impressive enough to justify a new album from The Ruler. The Ecstatic clocks in at 16 tracks strong and it gets bigger and better as it goes along. On the latter song, Mos says, Peace before everything thing/ God before anything/ Love before anything/ Real before everything/ Home before any place/ Truth before anything/ Style and stay radiate/ Love, power slay the hate. At only a 1:23 song, you want more. His inimitable style is demonstrated on other songs like the boom bap of Twilite Speedball, the minimalist Quiet Dog Bite Hard, and the thought provoking, Priority. So, even for the fan, Mos will probably make you retrain your Hip-Hop ear, because hes one of one. Mos spits, The old timers say we living in the final days/ Gunsmoke, young folk living any kinda way/ Gangster holiday, gritty states a hideaway/ Meanwhile soldiers take it straight through their armor plates. One such song is Wahid, which is laced with Muslim musical sentiments. The rest of the album overwhelmingly demonstrates Mos Defs natural ability to weave tales and project his ideals. From this moment on, there is no doubt that Mos Def is back. Hes got that BK bluster, but offers a unique conscious and educational perspective that seems natural, nearly formless. The Ecstatic is highly representative of the balance so needed in Hip-Hop, but its redeeming value is so much more.įrom the first song, Supermagic, the authority of Mos Defs distinctive, nasal voice is evident over a feverish guitar riff. The return comes in the form of The Ecstatic, his fourth solo album.Īt this point, Mos is an acquired flavor of Hip-Hop that one hopes will pierce the trappings of traditional media and commercially tinged outlets.

#Mos def the ecstatic sample full

“Twilight Speedball” posits the rapper’s flow as a drug, full of “bad news and good dope.” and despite invoking Obama on “History,” Mos trades rhymes with old partner Talib Kweli, powerfully asserting that the present remains tense - and hope still has a lot of work to do.It has been two and a half years since the release of Mos Defs True Magic, but the rapper, born Dante Smith, returns to Hip-Hop after his lengthy sabbatical. “Wahid” continues the Near Eastern theme as Mos lyrically collapses the inner city and the battlefield, two places where guns and bulletproof vests proliferate. While he professes to send his message to the “penthouse, pavement, and curb,” it’s the grimy, not glossy, that dominates here. Despite estimable acting chops ( The Woodsman, Something the Lord Made), the former Black Star co-captain is among our greatest MCs, and The Ecstatic is easily his finest full-length since Black on Both Sides, his 1999 solo debut.įirst single “Life in Marvelous Times” builds a furious narrative - moving from the rapper’s project upbringing to the present, where wonders and terrors abound - over an epic, sticky synth beat (from Ed Banger producer Mr. Within a few verses of thunderous lead-off track “Supermagic,” underpinned by a righteous sample of Turkish psych songstress Selda Bagcan, “Cherokee chief rocka” Mos Def more than makes amends for three years away from hip-hop, not to mention his disastrous 2006 Geffen swan song, True Magic.