Back at the Evergreen State College, hip-hop with a message was huge in the 1990′s.  Blackstar, the group that Mos Def formed with Talib Kweli, was blasted out the dorms heading into the new millennium.  Mos Def (aka Dante Smith) has released a few albums since his popularity of the late 90s, but he has also been busy with making his share of films in Hollywood.

Take a trip to Netflix or imdb and you’ll find out that Mos Def is a fairly prolific actor who studied film at NYU back in the early 90′s.  He also appeared in “The Hard Way” with Michael J Fox (1991) and starred on the short lived “Cosby Mysteries” (1994) but, what really caught my eye was the “Hip Hopera“, “Carmen“, which was produced by MTV in 2001.  I remember watching MTV pump the musical like it was the sequel to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller“.  The latest Destiny’s Child video, “Survivor“, was even set to premiere after the television “masterpiece“.  Well, the music sucked and, although Mos Def did a good job, he couldn’t save this poorly conceived idea to make the modern day version of “Carmen“.  It was like a generic time capsule of the early 21^st century rap music videos as a long form musical.  What I did enjoy was the MC’s work on “The Dave Chapelle Show“.  It felt magical and his performances were awesome.

2004 was a good year for Mos Def musically.  He released the critically acclaimed album, The New Danger, which featured the band Black Jack Johnson. Even though it was not a straight hip hop record, it brought Bad Brains and Living Colour together and that, alone, is pretty sweet.  In this coming year the rapper is scheduled to come out with a new CD, but it is more likely that a new Mos Def movie or television program will hit the streets before that project is released.  Smith’s ex-wife, Alana Wyatt, recently wrote a tell-all book about him, which makes some scandalous accusations about the artist, who prides himself on being “conscious“.  I have not read it, but I’m sure it was made to exploit the character and career of the performer by someone that could never have created masterpieces like 1999′s “Black on Both Sides” and 2007′s “Be Kind Rewind“.  With his latest release being the film “Cadillac Records” and, without a new record out in stores to promote, it seems as if Mos Def will simply go on tour for the hell of it.  This time through, I was able to catch Mos live at The Moore Theatre to see what his current stage show was all about. Read the rest of this entry →