I hated my nose growing up. It was too big, too bulbous. I wanted a white nose: Roman, aquiline. The insecurity grew milder as I got older, but it wasn’t until I saw the album cover for Black on Both Sides, and then listened to the music, that I understood how thoroughly I’d been brainwashed. Yasiin Bey, the erstwhile Mos Def, is Black on all sides and at all elevations. His nose is not like mine, but it’s also not the ad exec’s Platonic ideal of a leading man’s nose. On the cover, Bey is expressionless, more bemused than serene, his eyes reflecting light, and it’s all so very beautiful, beauty far beyond desire or admiration. The man is alive. What a remarkable thing that is! The music is a deepening of the portrait, a testament to self-love, love of a people, love of home, love of creation, love of music—and sprouting from all that love, demands for sanity and justice, all riding a tight, dextrous flow. Maybe it’s a shame that Bey released so little music over the years; 2009’s Ecstatic was his last album until 2022’s Black Star reunion (not counting the museum exhibit Negus). But maybe Bey was too sincere to do otherwise. Why keep speaking when all the message is there from the beginning? 10
Mos Def. Black on Both Sides. Rawkus/Priority, 1999. Reviewed September 7, 2024. Notable tracks: “New World Water,” “Speed Law,” “Rock ‘N’ Roll,” “Know That.”