It’s Hard To Stay Black On Both Sides

Once upon a time, back in the far echelon of the last century, I found myself far away from home pursuing my academic passions at the university. This was 1999 – the last iteration of Woodstock was a complete failure. Artists had more beef than unity, with hip-hop surviving being swallowed up by gangster rap. The genre was standing on the verge of being as niche as northern soul, with rap only labels too preoccupied glorifying liquor, weed, violence, and sex than giving a state of the street union on the social, political, and economic issues plaguing their listening base.

I was in college, halfway through my sophomore year. Rap City was still burning on all cylinders with Big Tigger, a staple in my dorm lobby. While checking the mail the entire room engulfed into Umi Says by a cat named Mos Def. Being from Chicago I didn’t know the who, what, when, where, why, and how of a Mos Def since I was not privileged to have made the acquaintance of super group Black Star at that point. The cut was cool, with a nice jazz fusion vibe reminiscent of the golden age of Kudu Records but I wasn’t feeling the singing. Yeah, not a fan of the Mos Def crooning but I will admit as the years have passed the song has worn on me to the point I don’t skip it.

A few weeks later or so Miss Fat Booty was blasting from the television in my dorm lobby. In the song came with a fresh type game and captivated me on the word wizardry of Mos Def with no shame. I didn’t move in the minutes and seconds Mos Def spouted his story of falling for a chick that turned out to be a THOT during the course of their relationship, embroiled in his iambic pentameter spouting endless bars with the precision of Merriam Webster’s dictionary. With the Aretha Franklin sample giving background support on the trials and tribulations of love lost, the beginning of my quest to find Black On Both Sides began.

Mos Def had introduced and I was a moth to the flame.

The quest to get my hands on this lyrical hip-hop gem was quite the adventure. One, I was in the middle of nowhere Illinois – a.k.a. the sticks – so it was hard to find anything that wasn’t country where I was at. Two, I got derailed by the remix to Miss Fat Booty, aptly entitled Miss Fat Booty 2, which was banging in every Black frat house on campus courtesy of the Lyricist Lounge. Three, I was in the middle of a torrid love affair with 8Ball & MJG after listening to Sitting On Top Of The World for the first time and stuck on Space Age Pimpin’ like it was the first rap song ever to come out. So I was distracted enough to forget about Mos Def for a little while.

The year I started graduate school Mos Def got back on my radar. Spike Lee’s Bamboozled was released in theaters and his appearance as the black power political activist Big Black Africa brought Miss Fat Booty back into my periphery. I crate dug until the crates broke to find Black On Both Sides. It was a mission well worth it to immerse myself into the genius that is Mos Def, realized from the moment the first bar banged on Fear Not Of Man.

Black On Both Sides should have been black by the time I stopped playing the album on repeat.

To the uninitiated, Black On Both Sides should be considered to 80s kids what Public Enemy’s It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back is for 70s kids. Very few rap albums are a revolution and a half, especially going into the millennium, but Mos Def’s debut solo album managed to solidify a top five spot in the category. Black On Both Sides is an explosion are words and sounds, news bites and samples, bringing the heat in a very state of the Black union presidential address that does not shy away from critical issues plaguing Black America. Uniquely, Mos Def is the mouthpiece for Black males his age and older, sounding off on everything affecting his demographic. From hoochies to housing, nutrition to new ways of socioeconomic thinking, Mos Def delivers like a politician campaigning for votes during an election year.

A visceral, in your face, unapologetic album, Black On Both Sides still hits the same more than twenty years after its release. This part love letter to hip-hop, as evident on the track Hip Hop and Mr. Nigga holds up challenging the listener to understand the world from the Mos Def corner. Tracks like New World Water and Mathematics are heavily influenced and leaned into politics, specifically their consequences on disenfranchised communities while Brooklyn (which comes off as a suite) focuses on Mos Def’s love hate relationship with his home, the grimy underbelly of New York City. Rawkus Records didn’t know what to do with this album and it shows, because only the chosen few discuss it in its proper context as one of the greatest hip-hop albums ever recorded.

Black On Both Sides is a lot of things – a rally cry of action, and call to arms to fight the power, a melancholy muse of music that addresses social ills without the downbeat, a soliloquy of Black America problems that takes analysis to come up with solutions – but overall it is the articulation genius of Mos Def. If ever there was a modern flawless entry of cerebral hip-hop from start to finish, from raw off the cuff spitting on the mic to secular sampling that is just as much of a storyteller as the rapper, this is it. Not every rapper can ever say how hard it is to stay Black On Both Sides except Mos Def.

No lies were spoken.