From
1999 Album: "
Black On Both Sides"
...[
Artist info below]...
..
Get
Mos Def's
Music:
http://www.amazon.com/Mos-Def/e/B000APZDZ2/digital/ref=ntt_mp3_rdr?_encoding=
UTF8&sn;=d
&
http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/mos-def/id92012
Born Dante Terrell Smith on
December 11,
1973, in
Brooklyn, NY, Mos Def began rapping at age nine and began professionally acting at age 14, when he appeared in a
TV movie. After high school, he began acting in a variety of television roles, most notably appearing in
1994 on a short-lived
Bill Cosby series,
The Cosby Mysteries. In 1994 Mos Def formed the rap group
Urban Thermo Dynamics with his younger brother and sister, and signed a recording deal with
Payday Records that didn't amount to much. In
1996 his solo career was launched with a pair of high-profile guest features on
De La Soul's "
Big Brother Beat" and
Da Bush Babees' "
S.O.S." A year later, in
1997, Mos Def released his debut single, "
Universal Magnetic," on
Royalty Records, and it became an underground rap hit. This led to a recording contract with
Rawkus Records, which was just getting off the ground at the time, and he began working on a full-length
album with like-minded rapper
Talib Kweli and producer Hi-Tek. The resulting album,
Black Star (
1998), became one of the most celebrated rap albums of its time. A year later came Mos Def's solo album,
Black on Both Sides, and it inspired further attention and praise. Yet, aside from appearances on the Rawkus compilation series
Lyricist Lounge and
Soundbombing, no follow-up recordings were forthcoming, as the up-and-coming rapper turned his attention elsewhere, away from music.
During the early
2000s, Mos Def acted in several films (
Monster's Ball,
Bamboozled,
Brown Sugar,
The Woodsman) and even spent some time on
Broadway (the Pulitzer Prize-winning Topdog/
Underdog). He simultaneously worked on the
Black Jack Johnson project with several iconic black musicians: keyboardist
Bernie Worrell (
Parliament/Funkadelic), guitarist
Dr. Know (
Bad Brains), drummer
Will Calhoun (
Living Colour), and bassist
Doug Wimbish (the
Sugarhill Gang,
Grandmaster Flash, Living Colour). This project aimed to reclaim rock music, especially the rap-rock hybrid, from such artists as
Limp Bizkit frontman
Fred Durst, who Mos Def openly despised. What made Black Jack Johnson so anticipated though was not so much the supergroup roster of musicians or even Mos Def himself, but rather the lack of black rock bands.
Following the demise of Living Colour, there were few, if any, that had attained substantial success. Mos Def hoped to infuse the rock world with his all-black band, and during the early 2000s, he performed several small shows with his band around the
New York area. In
October 2004, he finally delivered a second solo album,
The New Danger, which involved Black Jack Johnson on a few tracks.
Two years later, after a few more acting roles — including the
Golden Globe-winning
Lackawanna Blues and the Emmy-winning
Something the Lord Made, both of which were made-for-television movies — Mos Def released his third solo album,
True Magic (
2006). A contract-fulfilling release for
Geffen, which had absorbed Rawkus years prior, the album trickled out in a small run during the last week of 2006. Bizarrely, the disc came with no artwork and was sold in a clear plastic case — though its single, "
Undeniable," did manage to grab a
Grammy nomination for
Best Rap Solo Performance.
The Ecstatic, released on the Universal-distributed
Downtown label, followed in
June 2009; at that
point, Mos Def had significant acting roles in
Michel Gondry's
Be Kind Rewind (in which he co-starred with
Jack Black) and
Cadillac Records (he played
Chuck Berry).
Extended & Updated
Info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mos_def
- published: 04 May 2012
- views: 1948463