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THE NEW DANGER
(Geffen/Universal)
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As hip-hop pimps itself into its own version of rock’s late-’70s bloat, Mos Def brings punk to reclaim the boogie man, the block, and the N-word from bamboozlers everywhere. Never mind the champagne, Sean Combs, or Sean Paul, this is dirty rock. Mos is as much a visionary black hippie as Prince and just as fearless of genre, and his second solo joint smolders, twice as angry and heartsick as 1999’s Black on Both Sides (Rawkus). His all-star band, Black Jack Johnson (Will Calhoun, Doug Wimbish, Bernie Worell, and Gary Miller), career through four tracks with subterranean fury, and Shuggie Otis’s blues riffs grace "Blue Black Jack." Still wrestling a genre in love with its assholes, Mos rips hip-hop a new one by calling out Jay-Z on "The Rape Over" (yep, that’s Kanye West bringing the "5 to 1" sample), plummets into bad-trip raunch on "The Easy Spell," and whiplashes from head nod to breakneck on "War." He loops "What’s Going On?" for the triptych "Modern Marvel" and makes it count, summoning Marvin Gaye’s visceral father hunger and sexual longing. If 50 Cent intones "be easy" as a warning, Mos exhorts the opposite: be hard.
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