Yasiin Bey: How Black on Both Sides was crafted with love
Read why Yasiin Bey's (Mos Def) Black On Both Sides is still a timeless classic today and why love is the driving force of creation.
Yasiin Bey, formally known as Mos Def, is an artist like no other. With an ingenious way with words, a unique voice, a sense of melody, and an unconditional love for hip-hop, I’ve come to know Yasiin Bey as an artist who drops unapologetic music that is just as much real as it is entertaining.
I’m here to express what's really going on inside of me. My internal life, my observations of the world around me. And to do it in a way that is completely earnest, it’s not about trying to be what people expect of me.
–Yasiin Bey, Exclusive Beats HQ Interview
While listening to other hip-hop projects can sometimes make you feel like you’re visiting a high-end store filled with sparkled attire, Yasiin Bey’s projects feel more like visiting an art gallery.
And like great art, it makes you contemplate, gets better if you live with it for a while and when revisiting the pieces, they can give you new perspectives.
Just like this album.
Black on Both Sides
Black on Both Sides was released on October 12, 1999 by Rawkus and Priority Records.
In terms of both reviews and sales, the album was a huge success. It was certified Gold in the US, which in the late '90s, was not normal for a (at-the-time) "underground" artist dropping a “conscious” hip-hop album.
Don’t get me wrong, rappers have always used their music as a way to reflect and comment on the world they see around them. Conscious rap and introspective topics have also definitely become more present in today’s music.
However, doing it in 1999 on such a scale, made the then-still-called Mos Def stand out.
This 1999 review from Pitchfork puts it in perspective, and is like stepping into a time machine:
“With artists like this finally getting the respect they deserve, we could be entering a new era of hip-hop. Think about it. When was the last time you heard an MC drop a line like, "Mind over matter and soul before flesh"? When was the last time you heard somebody rap about the global economic and environmental consequences of first-world corporate waste and subsequent aquatic pollution? When was the last time you heard a hip-hopper sing competently over a phat-ass beat about the white appropriation of black art forms?” –Andrew Goldman, Pitchfork
Black on Both Sides is a layered and timeless classic
When diving into this album, I found this great 2019 video, where UCLA musicology professor Shana Redmond brought together critics, scholars, and musicians to reflect on the album's creativity and significance in celebrating its (at-the-time) 20th anniversary.
If you have an hour and a half to spare, I highly recommend listening to these experts breaking the album down academically.
While writing this, I’m well aware that you probably don’t have 90 minutes to spare.
But let me at the very least highlight one of my favorite parts of the panel session.
Panellist, Sohail Dualatzai, writer, curator, and professor breaks down the opening track “Fear not of Man” which samples Fela Kuti’s song “Fear not from Man”.
He says:
“If you listen to Mos’ records, they all open with the Muslim prayer, the very first words of the Quran –Bismillah Ir Rahman Ir Raheem– each of these records… They are all devotional songs. And to then open with Fela, in some ways, it's an interesting conversation he’s having with Fela I think.
Fela Kuti opens his song, by quoting Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the father of Pan-Africanism. And he says “The secret for black people, the secret of life, is to have no Fear”. So, fear not for man.
And Mos, to me, kind of took it in a different direction. He was like fear not of man, like man is not the controller of the universe here you know?“
My favorite track - Love
Now I’m far from a professor or a scholar, nor do I have the cultural background to do anything beyond listening and learning from the many black topics and themes addressed on this album.
However, “Love” is the track that truly resonated with me.
I feel this track is all about the importance of allowing love to drive you whenever you create something, whatever that is. In his case, his music.
While I loved the track before researching it in detail to write this article, I now find that I love it even more.
Intro/Chorus: Love for the art
The way the track opens reminds me of the feeling I sometimes can get when writing something new.
It’s hard to explain, but while jotting down words, you can sometimes get sucked into the story you’re building. It’s as if you’re getting lost in the process yet knowing exactly where you’re going.
When you feel like that, you don’t stop creating until you’re done.
Funny enough, that same feeling is described in the opening chorus.
I start to think and then I sink
Into the paper, like I was ink
When I'm writing, I'm trapped in between the lines
I escape, when I finish the rhyme
I couldn’t have said it better myself, and turns out, Yasiin Bey also couldn’t. As the lines of this opening chorus are actually an homage to Eric B. & Rakim’s “I Know You Got Soul”.
Yasiin Bey is and has always been a fan of Hip-hop, and incorporating these lines at the beginning of this specific track, I think, shows his “love” for hip-hop from the get-go.
But the concept is explored further and in great detail throughout the track, let’s break it down.
Verse 1: What is love?
Verse 1 - part 1: Made out of love
My pop said he was in love when he made me
Thought about it for a second wasn't hard to see
I could hear he was sincere, wasn't game or promotion
The entire affair's probably charged with emotion
When love call your heart I guess you got to pursue
He opens the verse by sharing how his father once told him that he was in love when he made him. A powerful foundation that I’m sure must’ve shaped him. I feel the realization he has after acknowledging that love is a complex concept, “when love calls your heart, I guess you got to pursue” shows some of that. It’s not something you have control over, you have to let it guide you.
He then goes on to do the most braggadocios thing on this track, by pronouncing his date of birth like he’s quoting religious scripture.
12-11-73, my life is testament
Praise the beneficent, element that breath
Devoid in the form that make love manifest
The use of the word testament in that first line could be double-layered here. A testament is often used as a statement. Believing in something.
So, I think that saying “My life is testament” in this context, means that he loves life and believes that his religion preaches love, and he should do so too.
The last line, "Devoid in the form that make love manifest," emphasizes the idea that there may be some elements or aspects missing in the way in which love is expressed or experienced by people. It could be Yasiin’s commentary on the complexities and challenges of love, suggesting that while it's a powerful and sincere emotion, it may not always be as straightforward.
Thinking back to how he carefully weighed the loving words of his father in the opening lines, is fitting.
As I type this, I realize we’re just at the start of the track.
Oh boy. Okay, moving on.
Verse 1 - part 2: Finding love
Now that we know he was made out of love, understands love, and wants to preach love more freely, the track continues by telling the listener about how he found his love for hip-hop.
I spent my early years in Roosevelt Projects
It was a bright valley with some dark prospects
Yasiin Bey was born and raised in Brooklyn, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Roosevelt Projects.
Brooklyn's Roosevelt Houses are 16 towering buildings covering nearly 8 acres in Brooklyn. The towering structure’s history is known for waves of crime, violence, and repression. Ironically, the group of buildings is named after Eleanor Roosevelt, a well-respected human rights activist, and the longest-serving First Lady in the US.
What I –for lack of a better word– love about this part of his verse, is how lovingly Yasiin describes his youth in an area that is known to be anything but that.
In '83, Vendy C was the host with the most
I listened to the Rap Attack and held the radio close (2x)
This is far before the days of high glamour and pose
Yasiin Bey reminisces on the first time he met his love, Hip-Hop, during humbler and underground times. How he loved it so much that he kept it as close to him as possible.
“Rap Attack” was a 1980s New York radio show, and was the first exclusive rap radio show to be aired on a major station.
Aiyo, power from the streetlight made the place dark
I know a few understand what I'm talking about
As I wasn’t one of the people that knew what he was talking about, I looked it up.
Turns out this is another homage, this time to KRS-one and the track South Bronx (BDP).
“You want a fresh style, let me show ya
Now way back in the days when hip-hop began
With Coke De La Rock, Kool Herc and then Bam
B-boys ran to the latest jam
But when it got shot up, they went home and said, "Damn
There's got to be a better way to hear our music every day"
B-boys getting blown away but coming outside anyway
They tried again outside in Cedar Park
Power from a street light made the place dark
But, yo, they didn't care, they turned it out
I know a few understand what I'm talking about” - KRS One
Cedar Park in The Bronx was the venue for what many consider the first-ever Hip Hop party. Way back in 1973, hosted by DJ Kool Herc.
The party began at his apartment building before expanding into the nearby park to accommodate the growing crowd.
And As for why it got dark? They tapped the electricity from a street light to power the music equipment.
It was love for the thing that made me wanna stay out
It was love for the thing that made me stay in the house
Block parties, radio, sometimes outside, sometimes inside, hip-hop was everywhere in his life, and wherever it was, Yasiin would be there too.
Verse 1 - part 3: The pain of love
Artists are artists because they create, not for the sake of creating but by creating a piece of themselves and sharing their perspective with the world. Yasiin goes on to describe his process:
Trying to find words that describe the vibe
That's inside the space
When you close your eyes and screw your face
That feeling of being in the zone.
Tapping into something you can only see before it’s there. I think what he saw in his head was inspired by what he described earlier in the verse. Where he was from. The place he loved, yet that same place was also filled with pain, violence, and misery.
Is this the pain of too much tenderness?
To make me nod my head in reverence?
That first line refers to a poetic essay from Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet”.
In it, Khalil Gibran discusses the theme of love and the pain that can be associated with it.
Khalil delves into the idea that love is a profound and transformative force in one's life, capable of both ecstasy and suffering, and it encourages readers to embrace love in all its dimensions.
He highlights the idea that love is self-sufficient and gives of itself freely, expecting nothing in return. He describes how love is not about possessing or being possessed, but about the experience itself. The desires associated with love, according to Gibran, include feeling the pain of tenderness, being wounded by one's understanding of love, and being willing to bleed joyfully.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully.” –Khalil Gibran
Maybe I’m wrong, but I interpret this as Yasiin acknowledging that the pain he feels from the thing he loves, doesn’t impact how much he still loves it, making him nod his head in reverence.
Should I visit this place in remembrance?
Or build landmarks here as evidence?
Nighttime, spirit shook my temperament
To write rhymes that portray this sentiment
As he’s writing his verse, he wonders what to do with it. Should he keep it to himself and revisit it whenever he wants to relive his thoughts and feelings? Or should he use it to craft art, make statements, and share it with the world?
Luckily for us, he decides to be the one to write the rhymes that portray that sentiment.
Verse 2: What to do with love
While the first verse was all about his past, the second verse is about the present. What he does with the love.
My folks said they was in love when they made me
I take the love they made me with to make rhymes and beats
Can you feel?
Starting the second verse similarly to the first verse, resets the story. He quickly reminds you that he comes from love. And that he uses that love to make his art.
With all he explored in the first verse, this is so powerful.
I'm reaching a height that you said cannot be
I'm bringing a light which you said we can't see
Saw the new day comin', it look just like me
Sun bursts through the clouds, my photo ID
I bring light to your day and raise your degree
The universal magnetic, you must respect it
From end to beginning; bright, true and living
Ever-changing but sustaining magnificent
Building the now for the promise of the infinite
Yasiin Bey ends his verse filled with positivity, proving the doubters wrong, bringing change, shining light in the darkness, and showing up the only way he knows how to.
With Love.
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