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Album Review

The Ecstatic

Mos Def
The Ecstatic

[Downtown; 2009]

8.0
 

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People looking for offhanded symbolism can feel free to try tracking Mos Def's career trajectory as an MC through his album covers. Iconic solo debut Black on Both Sides: a stark, immediately-striking photo portrait that renders the attribution of his name unnecessary. Aggro experimental follow-up The New Danger: that same face now obscured by a stick-up man's mask, his bright red, bloody-looking index fingertip pointing to his own head on some Taxi Driver shit. Contractual obligation mishap True Magic: no actual album art whatsoever, with a blank-looking Mos staring into space off the surface of the disc itself. And now The Ecstatic, which depicts not Mos Def himself but a red-tinted shot from Charles Burnett's classic 1977 film Killer of Sheep. You might go so far as to say this indicates that the best way for Mos Def to reassert what he really means as an artist would be to take his as-seen-in-Hollywood face out of the equation entirely, replacing it with a shot from an entirely different strain of independent, neorealist cinema that more clearly gets at what he represents as a lyricist. Maybe it's a stretch, but what the hell.

And while Burnett's Watts isn't quite the same place as Mos Def's Bed-Stuy, it does exist as one of many geographical reference points in The Ecstatic's international style. This is Mos Def's small-globe statement, an album that comfortably jumps stylistically across continents on a hip-hop goodwill-ambassador tour, prefaced by a statement from Malcolm X during his 1964 appearance at Oxford: "I, for one, will join in with anyone, I don't care what color you are, as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth." It's a high-minded intro for an album that most people will hear first and foremost as the comeback bid of a rapper-turned-actor, but it also serves as an important indication that Mos actually gives a shit here, and that he has a stake in something greater than just one corner of the rap world.

It starts with the production, which originates from assorted French touch cats (Mr. Flash) and Stones Throw siblings (Oh No; Madlib) and the producer from True Magic wh o actually contributed a couple decentish beats (Preservation). Oh No usefully repurposes some of the Turkish psych from his album Dr. No's Oxperiment, particularly the massive Selda-sampling acid-rock monster "Heavy" for lead track "Supermagic". Madlib contributes a couple tracks from his Beat Konducta in India series, diverting in their original form but done real justice by Mos' rhythm-sparring flow (and, in the case of "Auditorium", Slick Rick's). Ed Banger alum Mr. Flash covers the Caribbean ("Worker's Comp"), the Middle East ("Embassy"), and neon Euro-American club-kid slickness ("Life in Marvelous Times"). And Mos' own co-production touches in conjunction with Preservation's beats drive it all home: "Quiet Dog" opens with a defiant Fela Kuti soundbite, "Casa Bey" is built off Banda Black Rio's samba-funk number "Casa Forte", and Mos spends the entirety of "No Hay Nada Mas" rapping and singing in Spanish. There's a good chance you've heard some of this before-- aside from the aforementioned Oh No and Madlib contributions, "Life in Marvelous Times" recycles Mr. Flash's beat for "Champions", his collaboration with French rappers TTC-- but it's not a stale familiarity, at least in the context of The Ecstatic's ambitious B-boy diaspora.

But it wouldn't mean shit if it felt like the itinerary of a jet-set movie star showing everyone his vacation slides. Fortunately, the good thing about Mos Def not having brought his A Game in a while is that, like many rappers whose reputations have slipped, he was due for a something-to-prove moment. The Ecstatic has a bunch of those, smuggled inside the usual big-up Brooklyn and hip-hop preservationist lyricism and welded-to-the-beat flow that made him shine in '99, and his better turns of phrase have a way of sneaking up on you and smacking you in the back of the head. "Soul is the lion's roar, voice is the siren/ I swing 'round, wring out and bring down the tyrant/ Chop a small axe and knock a giant lopsided," he proclaims on "Auditorium" with the kind of delivery that makes the complex and convoluted sound natural. His anti-wack-MC diatribes on "Quiet Dog", the gunfight-love narrative of "Pistola" and the tone of sardonic but sincere Afrocentrism on "Revelations" reveal the versatility he still maintains in his repertoire. And even when he's just rattling off ego-trip riffs, the way he locks into a beat is scary; it's kind of hard to notice or care that he mostly keeps repeating the same Mary Poppins-derived hook on "Supermagic" when every syllable is like another percussion instrument boosting that head-nod factor by ten.

There are still some moments of weird, dope-hazy fuck-around on Mos' part, and while they don't really distract to the point where they test your patience, the frequent times when he drops into quasi-aimless sing-song vamping-- or straight-up attempted singing-- give The Ecstatic the feeling of a weeded-out jam session that didn't always go entirely according to plan and somehow fell together anyways. Still, it's the kind of fucking around that's clearly coming from a dude who sounds liberated, and a lot of it-- like the outro in "Pistola" where he interpolates the Intruders' "Cowboys to Girls" over some Madlib-provided vibes and King Tubby cookie-sheet-smacking percussion, or the casually amped don't stop the rock/can't keep me down declarations of closing track "Casa Bey"-- is too damn joyous to feel over-indulgent. Even absurd stuff like the Spanish track and his cod-reggae delivery on "Workers Comp" (try not to crack up the first time you hear the way he sings "fie-yerd" in the chorus) are more eccentric than bad. And anyone who wants to complain about those, well, go enjoy "History" instead: It's a Black Star reunion over a Dilla beat. Looks like we finally got the Mos Def we were waiting for.

— Nate Patrin, June 10, 2009


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