Today in Hip-Hop Oct 12: Mos Def's Black on Both Sides Turns 27 - Custom Creative

October 12, 1999. Mos Def drops Black on Both Sides on Rawkus and Priority, and it turns 27 today. Here’s the jewel: he wasn’t only rapping on it. Mos plays bass, congas, keys, drums and percussion across the record, so the live feel isn’t a session band, it’s him. Five years later to the day, on October 12, 2004, he released his second solo album, The New Danger. Same artist, same date, and two completely different records.

He came in hot off Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star (1998), and the production roster reads like a who’s who of the late-’90s underground. DJ Premier built “Mathematics.” Ayatollah flipped multiple samples of Aretha Franklin’s 1965 single “One Step Ahead” into “Ms. Fat Booty,” the lead single, which Pitchfork later ranked No. 144 on its Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s. Diamond D did “Hip Hop,” Ali Shaheed Muhammad of Tribe did “Got,” and 88-Keys and Psycho Les are in the credits too. “Umi Says,” the song that outlived everything, was produced by Mos himself with David Kennedy. The crates run wide: Fela Kuti, Kraftwerk, David Axelrod and the Bill Evans Trio all turn up in the samples.

The deepest receipt is Weldon Irvine. He’s the jazz keyboardist who wrote the lyrics to Nina Simone’s “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” and he mentored both Mos and Q-Tip. Irvine played keys on Black Star’s “Astronomy (8th Light)” and contributed to Black on Both Sides, which puts a direct line from the civil-rights songbook into a Rawkus record. The album hit No. 1 on Top Rap Albums and No. 25 on the Billboard 200, and the RIAA certified it Gold on February 2, 2000, less than four months after release, with no radio-pop crossover.

We made a Black Star tee for heads who know Black on Both Sides didn’t come out of nowhere, because it grew out of that 1998 run with Kweli. If you’re riding with the later Yasiin, the Ecstatic tee is right there too.

Also today in hip-hop:

Mos Def, The New Danger (Oct 12, 2004, 22 years): he swung for the fences with Black Jack Johnson, a rock band of Dr. Know on guitar, Bernie Worrell on keys, Doug Wimbish on bass and Will Calhoun on drums, alongside Kanye West, Minnesota and Easy Mo Bee beats. It debuted at No. 5, higher than his debut ever charted. Critics split down the middle (a 59 on Metacritic), and it didn’t go Gold until August 2017.
Salt-N-Pepa, Very Necessary (Oct 12, 1993, 33 years): “Shoop” reached No. 4, “Whatta Man” with En Vogue reached No. 3, and “None of Your Business” won the group its first Grammy. It went 5x Platinum, their biggest album, and it was the last one Hurby “Luvbug” Azor wrote and produced for them. (We covered their fight with UMG over the catalog.)
Leaders of the New School, T.I.M.E. (The Inner Mind’s Eye) (Oct 12, 1993, 33 years): it came out the same day as Very Necessary. Busta Rhymes, Charlie Brown, Dinco D and Cut Monitor Milo topped Hot Rap Songs with “What’s Next,” and dream hampton wrote in The Source that it was a rare sophomore album better than the debut. The group split soon after, and Busta went solo.