Yasiin Bey is among Hip Hop’s most prized MCs, and he has now shared his thoughts on one of the culture’s current leading voices.
During a Patreon-exclusive interview with The Cutting Room Floor that went live on Wednesday (January 10), the Brooklyn native discussed modern rap and the person at its forefront.
“Drake is pop to me,” he told host Recho Omondi. “In the sense like, if I was in Target in Houston and I heard a Drake song, it feels like a lot of his music is compatible with shopping. Or shopping with an edge, in certain instances.”
Though Bey did refer to the Canadian superstar’s music as “likeable,” he and Omondi had fun joking around about the idea of music that is an ideal backdrop for commerce.
“I love this mall!” Bey laughingly exclaimed. “They have everything here. This is the new Drake — you hear it?”
Turning serious, Bey suggested that music for shopping may not be relevant during “the collapse of empire.”
“Are we not in some early stage of that at this present hour?” he asked. “Buying and selling — where’s the message that I can use? What’s in it for your audience?”
As for those he outright admires, the 50-year-old rapper and actor will be performing a setlist comprising only MF DOOM covers at a one-night-only concert in France next week.
On January 18, the Black Star MC (formerly known as Mos Def) will put on an exclusive show at the La Cigale theatre in Paris dedicated to his late peer.
An Instagram post announcing the show reads: “Yasiin Bey always showed admiration to the rhymes of who’s been called Viktor Vaughan, The Villain, King Gheedorah or simply DOOM. He will perform some of his favorite tracks from the Masked One.”
To that point, there’s a famous video on YouTube of Bey talking about his love for MF DOOM in which he claimed that the Mm..Food spitter was a better rapper than Lil Wayne.
“I’d bet a million dollars on DOOM against Lil Wayne,” he said. “He rhymes as weird as I feel. When I saw that Madvillain record, I bought it on vinyl and I didn’t even have a record player. I bought it just to stare at the album. I stared at it and I just kept going, ‘I understand it.’
“’Cause, you know, I was a teenager growing up listening to [John Coltrane’s] Love Supreme and [Miles Davis’] Bitches Brew and [Charles Mingus’] The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, but I was also rhyming.”
MF DOOM (real name Daniel Dumile) passed away at the age of 49 in October 2020 after suffering from respiratory problems. Last year, it was revealed that he died from angioedema, a rare side effect of blood pressure medication.
Just say that Drake is gay and be done with it already.
Respect to Mos for saying how he felt even though many will disagree and attack him online. Hope he’s not about to or just dropped a single or album?
More like dentist office music tbh
Naw, pretty sure they play his music in gay bars and simp parties
Preach man. When you tell the truth they say you a hater…
But I thought the formula was to go mainstream and make it Bigg?
Oh. Big, but not too big. Then ‘they’ hate you.
Nope, not my family, fuck what you think
we just need to do new types of music and move on. Rap is a race to the bottom at this point. no way a 40 year old can be more childish emotional and short sighted than a 20 year old. But the problem is the industry has all these clowns hanging around that can’t play an instrument or write a song so they complain about Drake at 50 instead of coming up with their own Grover Washington Jr records. You need talent for that
I love to stroke my kitty cat when I listen to Drake. Sometimes I put peanut butter in my butt and let her lick it out. I pretend that it’s my boo Drizzy licking my bootyhole .. don’t act like I’m the only one !!!
You’re an obsessed gay dude. Stop saying gay/goofy shit on here already. It’s bad enough with the staff being weirdo🌈 people too they don’t need your stupid male groupie ass to help them push the 👬👨❤️👨 agenda.
Meeeeow!! Preach brother!
Unfortunately having the awareness of music and understanding it exists isn’t the same as being a musician and being able to create. I saw this was going to happen in the early 2000s. So many artists were actively discouraged from producing their own records – many guys came up as mc/producers then mysteriously stopped making beats. You can’t just snap your fingers and make up 20 years of time in 6 months after taking an online course
Maybe drake music is pop but mos def/Yasin bey whatever u call him sucks. I’m an old school head i never gave a F about his music or looked out for it. Who plays his music anywhere? Clubs, radio, in the whip, anywhere ?
Mos def released some of the greatest songs of the 90s era – if you never heard of him it’s your loss completely. He also was an indie film star. however his career flatlined sometime in the early 2000s could have been personal issues.
Kill yourself if you listen to Drake.
I’m so sick of Drake! Stop posting about him everyday!
Drake should k!!!ll himself.
rap music is just a shitty racist genre of music. they gave rap music to black folks because they took everything else away. look at the garbage they are trying to sell with taylor swift acting like she’s michael jackson all these shitty country artist now as well. music business itself is trash and that’s the problem not drake or yasiin. all these idiots writing in who hate the artists love the industry
Drake is the G.O.A.T