Mos Def Black On Both Sides Album
Ellington Walford
This goes a long way toward explaining the large majority of popular culture. But every once in a while, an album will make its way through reviewer after reviewer, deservedly earning absurdly high marks with nary a scratch. Such is the story with hip-hop's messiah of '99, Mos Def, and his solo debut, Black on Both Sides.
But, in a sea of lousy, burnt-out critics, why should you believe me? For starters, nobody serviced me to write this. Not since the emergence of A Tribe Called Quest and Q-Tip (who makes a brief guest appearance here on Mr. Nigga") has hip-hop seen an MC as intelligent, as lyrically proficient, and as baby-butt smooth as Mos Def.
If you heard Def's previous outings with Black Star, you probably saw this coming. If you didn't, it's clearly time to put Ol' Dirty on that shelf reserved for insane, materialist misogynists, and repent. With artists like this finally getting the respect they deserve, we could be entering a new era of hip-hop. Think about it. When was the last time you heard an MC drop a line like, "Mind over matter and soul before flesh"? When was the last time you heard somebody rap about the global economic and environmental consequences of first-world corporate waste and subsequent aquatic pollution? When was the last time you heard a hip-hopper sing competently over a phat-ass beat about the white appropriation of black art forms? Or end a song appropriately with a Bad Brains-influenced rockout, where both the drums and bass are played by the same guy?
Mos Def. The man does it all-- addressing serious socio-political issues while remaining positive and affirmative from start to finish. Inspiring, no? The current state of punk and independent rock could stand to learn a thing or two from this man.
True, Black on Both Sides isn't flawless. If you don't like Tribe-style laidback beats, you may have a more difficult time getting into this. Mos Def's singing on tracks like "Climb" and "Umi Says" is a bit hard to stomach, too. And then there's the matter of his sporadic introductory speeches, which occasionally sound like the pseudo-prophetic ramblings of a guy who might benefit from one less hit from the bong. But this, honestly, is nit-picking. Because when the beat drops and Def starts spitting his meticulously- crafted lyrics, you realize it's entirely possible that he truly is prophetic-- that he was meant to be kicking the rhymes, and that we were meant to listen.
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The album features a mix between established and rising producers. DJ Premier provides the instrumental track for "Mathematics". Diamond D is credited for "Hip Hop". Ali Shaheed Muhammad, known mostly as a member of A Tribe Called Quest, produced the seventh song "Got". Psycho Les of The Beatnuts produced "New World Water" and "Rock N Roll". Jazz legend Weldon Irvine provided additional production to "Climb".
On the song "Brooklyn", a three-movement piece dedicated to Mos's neighborhood in Bedford-Stuyvesant, New York, Bey rhymes three verses over three different beats. The first beat is an original composition produced by Ge-ology, while the second verse is a re-creation Smif-N-Wessun's "Home Sweet Home" and the last verse is set to the instrumental track of The Notorious B.I.G.'s 1995 single "Who Shot Ya?". Originally, Bey rhymed three complete verses over Ge-ology's musical composition, now referred to as the first movement of the song. On a later version, the first and third verses are set to the instrumentals of two other 1995 New York rap hits, "Incarcerated Scarfaces" by Raekwon as well as "Give Up the Goods (Just Step)" by Mobb Deep, respectively. The "Who Shot Ya?" verse, with the same vocal take on the released version, is placed in the middle. Bey sings his own interpretation of the Red Hot Chili Peppers song "Under the Bridge".
Bey was involved with two videos for Umi Says. One was more traditional, while the second one came when Nike and Jordan Brand chose "Umi Says" as its theme song for its Much Respect series of commercials for the Air Jordan XVI. As a result, the second video features appearances from Michael Finley, Eddie Jones, Derek Jeter, Roy Jones Jr., Ray Allen and even Michael Jordan himself.[6][original research?]
Black on Both Sides received universal acclaim from critics. Matt Diehl of Entertainment Weekly praised the album's diversity and noted, "Merging old-school bravado with new-school poetics, the Brooklyn legend spouts incisive Afrocentric reality that takes all sides into account."[8] Dan Leroy of Yahoo! Music opined that "Not since Rakim's heyday has a mic-rocker so clearly articulated such complex and entertaining thoughts, with the ability to wax eloquently on matters metaphysical ('Love') and just plain physical ('Ms. Fat Booty')" and hailed the album as "a sure pick as one of the year's best."[1]
The Independent lauded the record's "sharp reflections on a range of subjects from parochialism to pollution, fear to fat booties, rap to rock 'n' roll" and wrote that Black on Both Sides "stands as a proud example of the heights hip-hop can achieve when its exponents put their minds to it."[3] The Village Voice's Robert Christgau wrote that while he felt the album ran too long, "the wealth of good-hearted reflection and well-calibrated production overwhelms one's petty objections".[15] In a retrospective review, Charles Aaron of Spin described Bey as a "restless B-Boy citizen of the world" and called the album "playful, witty, and heart-pounding."[14]
Mos would become more adventurous on The New Danger, an underrated half-rock album with his supergroup Black Jack Johnson that no one in 2004 knew what to do with, and he even topped his debut with 2009's exotically gorgeous The Ecstatic before changing his name and all but disappearing from release schedules. But Black On Both Sides helped hint at what the next millennium's vision of hip-hop would be like, an impressionistic painting that honored not just his rap elders but many other genres as well. The great achievement of Mos Def's debut is that it made rap feel more comfortable in its skin, being whatever it wanted to be. That's still an ongoing process for too many black Americans, and too many are still not free.
This installment of GRAMMY Rewind turns back the clock to 2016, revisiting Lamar's acceptance speech upon winning Best Rap Album for To Pimp A Butterfly. Though Lamar was alone on stage, he made it clear that he wouldn't be at the top of his game without the help of a broad support system.
"First off, all glory to God, that's for sure," he said, kicking off a speech that went on to thank his parents, who he described as his "those who gave me the responsibility of knowing, of accepting the good with the bad."
He also extended his love and gratitude to his fiance, Whitney Alford, and shouted out his Top Dawg Entertainment labelmates. Lamar specifically praised Top Dawg's CEO, Anthony Tiffith, for finding and developing raw talent that might not otherwise get the chance to pursue their musical dreams.
To Pimp a Butterfly singles "Alright" and "These Walls" earned Lamar three more GRAMMYs that night, the former winning Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song and the latter taking Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (the song features Bilal, Anna Wise and Thundercat). He also won Best Music Video for the remix of Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood."
It's rare that a genre can be traced back to a single artist or group, but for funk, that was James Brown. The Godfather of Soul coined the phrase and style of playing known as "on the one," where the first downbeat is emphasized, instead of the typical second and fourth beats in pop, soul and other styles. As David Cheal eloquently explains, playing on the one "left space for phrases and riffs, often syncopated around the beat, creating an intricate, interlocking grid which could go on and on." You know a funky bassline when you hear it; its fat chords beg your body to get up and groove.
Brown's 1965 classic, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," became one of the first funk hits, and has been endlessly sampled and covered over the years, along with his other groovy tracks. Of course, many other funk acts followed in the '60s, and the genre thrived in the '70s and '80s as the disco craze came and went, and the originators of hip-hop and house music created new music from funk and disco's strong, flexible bones built for dancing.
Legendary funk bassist Bootsy Collins learned the power of the one from playing in Brown's band, and brought it to George Clinton, who created P-funk, an expansive, Afrofuturistic, psychedelic exploration of funk with his various bands and projects, including Parliament-Funkadelic. Both Collins and Clinton remain active and funkin', and have offered their timeless grooves to collabs with younger artists, including Kali Uchis, Silk Sonic, and Omar Apollo; and Kendrick Lamar, Flying Lotus, and Thundercat, respectively.
There are many bands that play heavily with funk, creating lush grooves designed to get you moving. Read on for a taste of five current modern funk and nu-disco artists making band-led uptempo funk built for the dance floor. Be sure to press play on the Spotify playlist above, and check out GRAMMY.com's playlist on Apple Music, Amazon Music and Pandora.
Aptly self-described as "discodelic soul," Brooklyn-based seven-piece Say She She make dreamy, operatic funk, led by singer-songwriters Nya Gazelle Brown, Piya Malik and Sabrina Mileo Cunningham. Their '70s girl group-inspired vocal harmonies echo, sooth and enchant as they cover poignant topics with feminist flair.
L'Impratrice (the empress in French) are a six-piece Parisian group serving an infectiously joyful blend of French pop, nu-disco, funk and psychedelia. Flore Benguigui's vocals are light and dreamy, yet commanding of your attention, while lyrics have a feminist touch.
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