MOS DEF-Key Club Los Angeles November 1999.

By C. A. Batts

I admit that I wasn't too familiar with any of the opening acts in a night dedicated to underground hip-hop. I did catch the Visionaries, Planet Asia, and Styles of Beyond all of which reassured me that mediocrity and materialism do not run hip-hop. MOS DEF is the future of our sacred musical culture he has the brains and mic brawn to take us into the millennium. He opened the show by saying "Go buy my album, No fuck that go buy a fucking book." How many artists have the intelligence to suggest reading a book and he wasn't refering to Oprah's book club he was refering to liberation and self empowerment books by both jailed revolutionaries Mumia Abul Jamal and Leonard Peltier were suggested reads. That's fucking class. He was cocksure and comfortable on stage performing most of the songs off of his new album the most memorable song to me (I bought the album the next day) was his song Rock n Roll which was a mix of rap-rant about who really is Rock Roll (which includes Jimi Hendrix, Bo Didley, John Lee Hooker, Little Richard, etc.) That ended with a Bad Brains like punk song that erupted the crowd into a moshing frenzy. I even saw Macy Gray, Will I am(Black Eyed Peas)and Esthero stage side bobbing their heads. It had heavyweight title fight energy to it in the sold out Key Club. As wack as it may sound MOS DEF is fresh. He doesn't bring along the baggage of being from a weak crew or having a shiny video or being overtly thugged out. No, he takes it back to the basics with the lighting bolt natural energy of 1987,