Mos Def has announced that he is to change his name at the end of 2011. He will stroll into 2012 with the brand spanking new alias 'Yasiin', or as I am planning on calling him, the Cat Stevens of rap music.
Mos told MTV: "Mos Def is a name that I built and cultivated over the years, it's a name that the streets taught me, a figure of speech that was given to me by the culture and by my environment, and I feel I've done quite a bit with that name. [But] it's time to expand and move on."
Mos Def aka Most Definitely aka ONE OF BEST NAMED MUSICIANS EVER, blew up with his debut solo record Black on Both Sides as part of the late nineties Rawkus Records imprint. The label was untouchable at the time and is still my favourite happening in Hip Hop's tangled history.
The problem with Mos is that he knows just how brilliant he is, and subsequently the vast majority of his follow ups have been half baked and unfulfilling. Full of experiment and not enough concrete ideas. His second record The New Danger surfaced in 2004 as a half-hip-hop-half-rock-half-heavy-metal-mess. It didn't get within a million metres of Black on Both Sides and, as a result, hype surrounding Mr Mos wained a little. The records kept coming, as did the West End stage performances and Hollywood roles in modern classics 'The Italian Job' and 'The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy', but again, I was always super disappointed that Mos Def didn't use Black on Both Sides as a springboard to cement his place at the top of the Hip Hop tree. He is there or there abouts, maybe four or five branches from the top, but he doesn't get a special mention anymore.
It is very easy to watch a musician ply their trade from afar and either agree or disagree with the career moves they make. It is a speciality of mine, but I am not looking to hate. Of all the artists that I hoped would pursue their truest talent to the end, Mos Def was that guy. Regrettably, it unfolded that Mos was too busy reading scripts, acting badly and endorsing Nixon watches to put pen to paper and write the genre defining verses he was so very capable of.
If he wasn't so in tune with his own brilliance, Mos Def would have gone on to become the best emcee on the planet, but it just wasn't meant to be.
I hope that Yasiin comes with the fire in 2012 but the chances are hella slim.
Permalink: http://livemusic.fm/news/mos-def-is-no-more-well-almost
Posted 8th September by Livemusic Team
