There's more than a little griping in hip-hop circles these days, and not just from disgruntled older listeners, hungry for something "fun" that resembles the refracted memories of their youth. Fans are hungry for an MC they can genuinely admire-- one who doesn't resort to moral backpedaling, misogyny, foolishness, or even guile. An honest guy, but not just an everyman. A super-everyman. In many ways, Brooklyn's Mos Def (née Dante Smith), should have been that guy. With his third solo album, True Magic, that dream is all but over.
It's been rumored that this is a deal-closer, the last album Mos owes Geffen Records, the label that inherited him when Rawkus Records folded in 2002 and was rolled into Interscope Records' vast empire. Mos, who's best known now as an Emmy-nominated actor, or concurrently "that guy from the Denali commercial," seems to have lost any interest in a music career, at least one under Geffen's umbrella. Everything about this album is half-assed: From the bafflingly bare packaging to the at-times miserable mix, True Magic is a mess. Experimentation has been an organizing principle for Mos for some time, from the jagged riffs and polemics of "Rock N Roll" from his debut Black on Both Sides to the psych noodlings and bluesy crooning on his last album, the uneven and only slightly less calamitous The New Danger. Here, experimentation isn't even on the radar.
These songs feel blah-ed out, packed with idle rhymes that sound as if they've been sitting in a notebook that never should have been opened. Take this nugget from "Undeniable", a song nominated for a Grammy this year, one presumes because Mos carries some sort of artistic clout: "These jokers don't want none/ And all the pretty mamis want some/ Tell 'em come." Thrilling.
The production doesn't help often, either. "Murder of a Teenage Life" is turgid and off-key-- death knells for a rhymer-- while "Fake Bonanza" is the sort of aimless, generic production that gives boho rappers a bad name. Some tracks here would be decent fodder for a C-level mixtape, like "Crime & Medicine", a note-for-note remake of GZA's "Liquid Swords", minus the Genius' lyrical bite and intensity. Also included is the much-maligned "Dollar Day (Surprise, Surprise)", his Hurricane Katrina missive released last year. Messily rhyming in an odd twang over Juvenile side project UTP's "Nolia Clap", Mos received a pass for the song, as his heart is clearly in the right place (at least he dissed Bono), even if his ear seemed waterlogged. But to include it on a proper album is a poor move.
Still, Mos Def is an engaging figure that has long radiated the charisma, if not the work ethic, to grab the mantle hanging above his head. "U R the One" is a lovelorn, confused wail-- the grown continuation of his own "Ms. Fat Booty". He raps: "When we met your face was so brown, your ass was so round, of course I'm so down/ Wish I knew then what the fuck I know now/ Couldn't read the signs of the road: SLOW DOWN." It's one of the few symbols of growth here. Even the simplistic and poorly recorded "There Is a Way", a song with just two lines, has verve-- even some uplift-- in its rally-cry sloganeering.
For years, it seemed as if Mos' songs had ideas and that those ideas had vision (assuming we can all ignore "New World Water"), woven smartly with a bookish, booming flow. And suddenly, as his acting profile grew, his musical output faltered. Many of the songs that leaked prior to True Magic's release aren't included here, offering some a glimmer of hope that Mos is holding that stuff close to the vest for his first post-Geffen project. Still, the apathy here signals some sort of finality. Whether it's the end of a chapter or a book is unclear.
