![]() ![]() But despite the calculation and consumer-minded distribution model, The Ecstatic turns out to be a modest but unmistakable step back toward comparable consciousness.īefitting a return to roots, “Live in Marvelous Times” is Mos Def’s “I Wish,” a hard-edged return to Bedford-Stuyvesant circa 1982 (“the pre-crack era”) in which bittersweet memories of the pop culture that was (“My phone wasn’t touchtone, a heavy beef in the street E.T. had to flee”) are juxtaposed against a clear-eyed view of the reality that sets in harder with each passing year. Set against a magisterial beat, it alone validates the borrowing of Burnett on the cover. Killer of Sheep‘s Watts neighborhood isn’t Bed-Stuy, but Mos Def makes the leap of faith as deftly as the pictured boy, leaping from rooftop to rooftop. It’s probably the fullest standalone song on the whole album, which otherwise proudly bears the trademark stamp of producer Madlib’s cinematic sound palate (solidly emulated by his younger brother Oh No). #MOS DEF THE ECSTATIC RAR FREE#īoth “Auditorium” and “Revelations,” with their spaghetti western samples and interjected raspberries, sound like flat-out remixes of Madvillain’s “All Caps” the entire album careens wildly, free from the constraints of chorus and verse, like the best from Stones Throw’s back catalogue. ![]() With leftfield collaborations with Slick Rick on one side and the reedy-feely Georgia Anne Muldrow on the other, The Ecstatic isn’t the concentrated wonder that is Black on Both Sides, but it’s a refreshing bounce back from the precipice of the Land of Sellout. And you can print that on a T-shirt.Perhaps the only development more surprising than Mos Def’s re-ascension to the hip-hop summit - some 10 years after Black Star, his collaboration with Talib Kweli, foreshadowed icon status - is the fact that he’s one of the first artists ever to have an album released as a T-shirt. Yes, it’s true: Clothing line LnA recently unveiled the Mos Def Music Tee, a shirt with album art, tracklist and a tag imprinted with a URL and download code for his fourth solo album, The Ecstatic. Gimmick or innovation? It doesn’t matter - The Ecstatic, released in June on Downtown Records, is proving a style statement unto itself, earning the 35-year-old Brooklyn native some of the best reviews of a career that blossomed with his work in the late 1990s with Rawkus Records crew. To hear some of the feedback, you’d think critics would have given the shirts off their back for the new project. Gabriel Boylan of Spin: “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.” And from Sach O on Passion of the Weiss: “Mos Def has finally dropped the album you’ve been waiting for after a decade lost in the wilderness.” Writes Nate Patrin on Pitchfork: “This is Mos Def’s small-globe statement, an album that comfortably jumps stylistically across continents on a hip-hop goodwill-ambassador tour… an album that most people will hear first and foremost as the comeback bid of a rapper-turned-actor, but also an important indication that Mos… has a stake in something greater than just one corner of the rap world…”Īdds J. The man born Dante Terrell Smith has hit pay dirt by being bold musically and almost sage lyrically. ![]() The Ecstatic’s production - from the likes of Madlib, Oh No, Georgia Anne Muldrow and Mr. Flash - is a Middle Eastern sampler platter served up with an island music cocktail and a side order of electro. ![]()
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