A rapper who plays bass, congas, percussion, keyboards, drums, and vibraphone on his own debut album is already doing something unusual. A rapper who stretches that debut past 71 minutes, fills it with live instruments, and hands production to a dozen different beatmakers is doing something close to reckless. Mos Def, the Brooklyn MC who had just made his name as half of the duo Black Star, did both on Black on Both Sides, released on October 12, 1999 through Rawkus and Priority Records.
From Black Star to solo risk
The risk made sense only because of what came before. In 1998, Mos Def and Talib Kweli had released Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star, a project that made both men central figures in the East Coast hip-hop revival. A solo debut could have been a quick, safe follow-up. Instead, Mos Def took executive producer credit himself and built an album that sounded less like a rap record and more like a band session, with live bass, keys, and percussion carrying socially conscious lyrics.
The production list reads like a roll call of underground beatmakers. DJ Premier made the instrumental for Mathematics, a track built on samples from James Brown, Erykah Badu, and The Fatback Band, plus a fragment of an Angela Davis interview. Ali Shaheed Muhammad from A Tribe Called Quest produced Got. Psycho Les from The Beatnuts handled New World Water and Rock N Roll. Diamond D produced Hip Hop. Ayatollah made Ms. Fat Booty and Know That. 88-Keys produced Love and Speed Law, then worked with Mos Def on the instrumental outro May–December.
Brooklyn's three-part structure
The album's most ambitious moment was Brooklyn, a three-part composition dedicated to the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. Mos Def raps three verses over three different beats. The first is an original Ge-ology composition. The second reworks Home Sweet Home by Smif-N-Wessun. The third is built on the instrumental from The Notorious B.I.G.'s 1995 single Who Shot Ya? That structure was not the original plan. An early version had all three verses over the Ge-ology beat, and another version used instrumentals from Raekwon's Incarcerated Scarfaces and Mobb Deep's Give Up the Goods (Just Step).
Mos Def also made choices that could have alienated hip-hop purists. He performed his own interpretation of Under the Bridge by Red Hot Chili Peppers. He brought in jazz musician Weldon Irvine, who played keyboards, Hammond organ, and piano, and arranged strings on Climb. Will I Am played Fender Rhodes piano on Umi Says. Guest appearances came from Busta Rhymes, Talib Kweli, Vinia Mojica, and Q-Tip, but the album never felt like a compilation. It felt like one man's sprawling, stubborn vision.
Two singles, two chart stories
The singles told two different stories. Ms. Fat Booty, released with Mathematics on August 2, 1999, reached the third spot on the US Rap chart and number 54 on the US R&B chart. Umi Says came out in 2000 and climbed to number 8 on the UK Singles Chart. That song's second video arrived after Nike and Jordan Brand chose it as the theme for their Much Respect ad campaign for Air Jordan XVI. The video featured Michael Finley, Eddie Jones, Derek Jeter, Roy Jones Jr., Ray Allen, and Michael Jordan.
Critics responded with unusual warmth. Pitchfork gave the album an 8.7 out of 10. Spin awarded a perfect 10. NME gave it an 8. Robert Christgau rated it A−. The commercial response matched the critical one. Black on Both Sides reached number 25 on the Billboard 200, number 3 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, and number 1 on the Top Rap Albums chart. On February 2, 2000, the RIAA certified it gold after sales passed 500,000 copies.
The album's sample choices showed how wide Mos Def's net was. Fear Not of Man used Fela Kuti and Kraftwerk. Know That pulled from Dionne Warwick and Refugee Camp All-Stars with Lauryn Hill. Mr. Nigga sampled Gil Scott-Heron. May–December drew on Kool & the Gang and KC & the Sunshine Band. None of these were obvious rap samples. They were the sounds of a rapper who treated hip-hop as a room with many doors, and who opened all of them at once.
Black on Both Sides arrived at a moment when East Coast hip-hop was fighting for its identity. Mos Def answered not with nostalgia but with expansion. He played six instruments, produced only one track solo, and trusted a dozen producers to shape his voice. The album's 71 minutes never feel padded. They feel like a map of everything Mos Def believed rap could hold, from jazz keys to Angela Davis interviews to a three-beat love letter to Bed-Stuy.