Mos Def – The Ecstatic
In what felt like a pretty barren year for hip-hop, it was kind of surprising that the one stone-cold classic came from Mos Def. Not that he doesn’t have pedigree – 1999’s Black On Both Sides, naturally – but his recent output was either muddled (The New Danger) or creatively impotent (2006’s True Magic). From the off, Mos Def sounds rejuvenated here, spitting politically charged rhymes over aggressive horn-blasts on ‘Twilite Speedball’ or heady, swirling narratives on the brilliant future-pop of ‘Life In Marvellous Times’. Featuring production from Madlib, Chad Hugo and the late J Dilla, The Ecstatic fuses funk, jazz and Afrobeat to create a dense, layered sound that rewards repeated listens.
Key track: ‘Quiet Dog Bite Hard’
Monday was all a bit of a blur and we bleated on about the fact that there were no good albums out this week, blah, blah, blah. We were wrong of course. The Ecstatic by Mos Def is in most good record shops (i.e. HMV as it's the only one left) now and it's possibly the best Hip Hop album we've heard since Clipse's Hell Hath No Fury.
Featuring production from Madlib, J Dilla (didn't he die a little while ago now?) and The Neptunes, it's an album packed full of socially conscious wordplay, humour and enough banging beats to makes you realise that rap need not begin and end with the Black Eyed Peas.
This is 'Twilite Speedball', produced by The Neptunes:
Which chump said The Neptunes couldn't produce for shit anymore? Idiots.
Even better is this, Quiet Dog (Bite Hard):
It's enough to get this white arse gyrating like a mad man.
