Mos Def's "Black on Both Sides" is the Perfect Hip-Hop Album

To me at least.

In high school, you couldn’t tell me I wasn’t going to be a famous rapper. It was the mid 1990s, and the Wu-Tang Clan had recently dominated hip-hop with their unique blend of sullen street tales and obscure soul samples. My friends and I thought we were them; our rhymes were equally abstract, talking about nothing and everything at the same time. We’d often try to link with other crews in nearby neighborhoods to form one big collective.

Back then, with my baggy jeans, oversized shirts and tan Timberland boots, I was the stereotypical rap head who prioritized intricate lyrics over the “Shiny Suit” ethos ushered in by Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs and his Bad Boy Records empire. He brought an era of decadence; from his tailored suits to the sanitized sound of his music, Combs found himself in the crosshairs of underground rappers with traditional mindsets who prioritized skill over flash.

I was very much a traditionalist. I had grown up a fan of groups like A Tribe Called Quest and Public Enemy, and solo acts like Rakim and Big Daddy Kane. While I could appreciate Bad Boy’s contributions to the culture — Brooklyn’s The Notorious B.I.G., perhaps the greatest rapper of all-time, was the label’s crown jewel — you were more likely to find me at the incense-n-open-mic poetry slam than the massive arena show.

Sometime in 1996, I was watching a music video channel when a song came on that I couldn’t turn away from: “Body Rock,” featuring the rappers Tash (of the L.A. group Tha Alkaholiks); Q-Tip (of Tribe); and Mos Def (now known as Yasiin Bey), the unassuming MC who I’d seen in a commercial with the football great Deion Sanders a few years prior. Nothing about that commercial screamed “great rapper,” yet there he was in this video, rhyming alongside Tip and Tash over a midtempo electronic drum loop.

Mos was a student of Tribe, De La Soul, and the Jungle Brothers. He was a poet and a theatre kid who had a palpable affinity for jazz music. Mos represented the full scope of Blackness, not just the overly aggressive trope depicted in films and other media. He seemed familiar, like the friends I rapped with: low-key the illest lyricist in the cipher yet the last to mention it. “Body Rock” was featured on Lyricist Lounge, Vol. 1, a double CD compilation full of exceptional musicians — the poet Saul Williams; the rap group Company Flow; and the lyricist KRS-ONE, among others — but I was most intrigued with Mos Def’s contribution and wanted to see what he’d do next.

In 1999, Mos Def released his debut solo album, Black on Both Sides, via the indie powerhouse label Rawkus Records. Just a year prior, he and fellow Brooklyn rapper Talib Kweli released their debut album as Black Star, seemingly the answer to what they saw as the commodification of hip-hop culture. Combs and the rapper Jay-Z were blamed for this; on “Children’s Story,” one of several highlights on Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star, Mos depicted Combs as a culture vulture who wanted to get rich while sacrificing his own integrity. By the rapper’s estimation, he didn’t want to add anything to hip-hop; he merely wanted to line his pockets. Whether or not you were a Combs disciple, there was no denying Mos Def’s narrative flair. “Children’s Story” felt more like a conversation than a finger wag, a gathering to expose a villain.

Black on Both Sides was a sonic and thematic masterpiece, rich with the tapestry of Afrobeat, ‘70s soul, punk-rock, ‘80s rap and Quiet Storm radio. Though ambitious, the execution led to a seamless listen that scanned as rap and flared in so many different directions. There were elements of jazz, spoken-word and ambient, and the album’s lasting single, “Umi Says,” was a charming self-reflective take on his own wants and imperfections, sang in unpolished pitch over a velvet-smooth arrangement featuring an upstart composer named Will.I.Am and the great and unheralded bandleader Weldon Irvine on keys.

Throughout the LP, Mos Def was funny and observant, blunt yet comforting. Most of all, he was informal. Even as he warned against wearing your designer clothes in certain parts of Brooklyn, like he did on the song “Got,” he rapped with a figurative arm around your shoulder, as if to ask, “Are you sure you wanna wear that gold necklace in Bed-Stuy?”

Elsewhere, on “Rock n Roll” and “Mr. N***a,” respectively, his tone was rightfully serious. On the former, he denounced Elvis Presley as an imitator who pirated the aesthetics of Black rock pioneers Chuck Berry and Little Richard. On the latter, he lamented traveling while Black. Undeterred, he ended the track by declaring life in the face of racism. “I’mma live, though,” he proclaimed, as if resigned to the microaggressions he’d experienced in Europe.

It took courage to release something like Black on Both Sides in 1999. Rap wasn’t as open-minded as it is now, so for Mos to incorporate singing and other genres was especially peculiar. This was long before artists like Kid Cudi and Drake made singing rappers ubiquitous in the mainstream. Mos wasn’t the first to do this, of course: Lauryn Hill did so on her 1998 opus, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, but she was already an equally adept vocalist who held her own in R&B. The same went for Cee-Lo, who, as a member of Atlanta’s Goodie Mob in 1995, introduced himself as a remarkably talented rapper-singer, who’d go on to have a formidable career in hip-hop, soul and alternative rock (as one-half of Gnarls Barkley with the producer Danger Mouse).

I don’t think Mos would’ve classified himself as a singer; he could carry a tune, but it wasn’t the strongest aspect of his artistry. And because hip-hop was still hyper-masculine, there was the false notion that Mos was too soft to be considered a serious MC. Where others rapped about drugs and violence, he showed us it was cool to be regular and rhyme about God, that you could unpack life without the facade others upheld. It was fine to have a song about romantic love near one about the global water crisis. It was also fine to not have shit figured out, as long as you’re working to make things clear.

I’ve always loved this album, but, as corny as it sounds, it didn’t truly click for me until I moved to Brooklyn in 2016. It’s one thing to absorb it elsewhere, it’s another to play it while walking through Fort Greene and Bed-Stuy. It hit me differently when I was able to trek the same sidewalks, ride the same trains, and past the same storefronts. I felt a semblance of the community that Mos felt, even though I was an outsider trying to navigate new terrain. Though I’d been a New York City regular long before I became a resident, Black on Both Sides made me feel like I belonged there (though I’d never disrespect my New York native friends by calling myself a New Yorker).

Just like the music I grew up with, this album helped reassure my stance as a person who likes many different genres. And because Mos Def was such a fascinating writer, he nudged me — albeit indirectly — toward life as a full-time creative writer, a documenter of the culture in all its breadth and subtlety. More than 20 years on, Black on Both Sides is a highly-regarded classic, a perfect album then, now and always.