During a recent interview on Hot 97’s Ebro In The Morning, Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def) expressed his frustration with the lack of quality in today’s Hip Hop music, something he attributes to the sheer volume of content being put out by modern-day artists.
Bey admitted he finds it difficult to keep up with all the new music being released and questioned the quality of the music being put out.
“How are people even supposed to focus on your shit if there’s 11 million niggas that got new shit out everyday? I can’t listen to all these — I got shit to do,” Bey says around the 41-minute mark. “I have things to do. It’s not a fucking game. It’s not a joke. The more you become an adult, you realize, ‘I’m a fucking adult’ … I’m not sitting here … I’m not listening to all of these niggas. Why? I could just listen to already made niggas whose shit just gets better with time, and if some new niggas come through [like] my man J.I.D from Dreamville [Records]. Fire. Gimme that.
“But even in the course of a day, for the artists that I do like, how much time, if I’m trying to develop myself as a useful human being, do I have to sit and be entertained?” he continued. “And if I’m gonna just be sitting there opening myself up to listening to some shit, what is it doing for me? What did I learn at the end of this? What beauty was expressed? … I be clowning all my young people with their listening selection sometimes so hard, but I understand because it’s there generation. But I be like, ‘Yo, put some critical thought into what the fuck is being communicated here. What is this young nigga talking about?’”
Elsewhere in the interview, Bey outlined why it wasn’t necessary for artists like Drake and Kendrick Lamar to sign major label deals early on in their careers.
“Did Drake really have to sign a deal with Young Money?” he said. “He had songs on the radio that was charting without a deal. I went to see Kendrick at The Music Box Theatre in L.A. in 2011 [and] it was sold out! [It was] sold out off of Section.80 and everybody knew every single word. This was six years ago.”
Bey and producer Ferrari Sheppard, released their December 99th album late last year. The project was recorded in South Africa, where Bey spent much of 2016 detained as a result passport issues.
Watch the full interview above.
I love mos. he’s in my top 5. But man drop some rap if ur tired of hearing the garbage on the radio. I love Dec99th with the homie Ferrari. Lord knows I’m tired of the radio. And I never listen to it. But drop an album every so often
That fuckin’ Mannie Fresh collabo album is gathering dust too! Smh.
Heard he retired so sorry Tony haha, I get where his coming from. There are too many new rappers not really saying nothing new and when ur done with one, (lil this, young that) another rapper just dropped an album like damn! who got time to go through 1gb of music every month ROFLMAO
Take your share of the blame for co-signing thatKanye “piss on your grave” shit… and for making that wack free album last year. December 5th? December 9th?
Nobody listening to this clowns music. The so called deep corny weird looking weird dressing weirdo. Ugly mofo go back to africa .
Speak for yourself, sh*thead. He’s got multiple HIP HOP classics. You wouldn’t know anything about Hip Hop with all of the Auto-Tuned fruitcakes that you millennials listen to nowadays. Bunch of purple-haired trannies wearing purses, moaning “Yuh!” and “Aye!” over generic FL Studio trap beats. Sh*t is ridiculous. Lmfao!
He’s got multiple. White suburban kids kill me. The streets never listened to this broke rapper. He’s classic in the suburbs tho FOH
The streets? Did you just say the streets? In Mos’ prime people were proud to be from the streets, now we all grew up and realized “the streets” is a bunch of hood boogers rapping about shit they don’t really have. Keep glorifying the streets…it’s like the black community can’t hold itself down enough. White people used to try to hold black people down, now they just watch black people do it for them and laugh at how absurd it is.
White dxstaff it’s definitely you . Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa !
“White suburban kids . . ” The f*ck? F*CK ALL the WAY OUTTA HERE WITH THAT RACIST BS! Always bringing race into the picture as if HIP HOP belongs to one race? It’s meant to be shared! All music is! And AB-SO-F*CKING-LUTELY the streets were listening to Mos Def, you f*cking ignoramus. What planet were YOU on when he came up? Blackstar, solo albums etc. Dummy! You racist, entitled POS’s kill, not only me, but HIP HOP! That’s the problem with YOU new sh*theads, you don’t respect the foundation. Take a seat!
White New York dxstaff is that you?
“White New York dxstaff” is your argument? Lol! Oh, the irony of reverse racism! Cool story, “Paul D.”
It abso-f*cking-lutely does! He’s right. S/O to Mos Def!
December 99th was below average
Agree with Mos Def 100% here.
#TheAntagonist #OutNow #TalentDisplayDOTcom
We Miss Mos Def, fk the haters
he should’ve named his last album december 1999 because that shit sounds like old dated new york bullshit music which is the reason new york hiphop died
Who cares what this washed up moose thinks?
HipHop cares bro. HipHop dickhead…. Get a soul.
I got a soul, this moose doesn’t because he worships Satan bro. His last good album was that Ectastic joint ya dig? Auditorium with Slick Rick was my shit back in the day but feel this cuz. Mos aka Washed Up Moose fell off. His last album was wack, dumpster juice, Expensive hooker with a willy instead of a dewey ya feel me? I been with him since he first dropped but he fell off. Aint no shame in that, every rapper, singer, and jiggy bobber falls off after a while. That’s just life cuz
WTF? You had me at “jiggy bobber”
I lost respect for this dude once he put that dress on it was over
Ecstatic was my favourite record in college. Bring that flavour back, and seperate from these young cats, because that December 1999 shit was wack.
Dope interview with nothing but real talk. In terms of music, Mos is one of the best to ever do it and still has ability to drop a straight classic hip hop album. I’m confident Mos could drop some hot hip hop shit to murder the game in his sleep.
HHDX SUCK COCK TILL TODAY SO FUCK YALL FAKE HIP HOP NEWS PUT SOME REAL SHIT NOT POP BUT HIP HOP
FUCK HHDX
paul d whoever you are,.. shut the f.. up. after reading your stupid comment about mos def, you are just MORON. just go s.. a d
Man when will this dude make music again
I agree with him 100%. To me the Hip-Hop industry (maybe the whole music industry?) has opened its doors too much to artists. Today there are way too many artists, releasing projects too often, (like every year, when before it was every 2-3 year even more sometimes), and releasing projects with too many songs. When you see albums with 20+ songs, how do you want to have a relevant project with only killer tracks ? Of course you have filler tracks instead and just few killer ones. Then you see repetitive albums sonically, artists not able to reinvent themselves. Creativity is a process, you need to give it time. And then you end up with streaming platforms cause you have so much music that people can’t keep up with the buying rhythm (indeed, why buying when you got millions of tunes with 10$ ?). Eventually you end up with disposable/consume and throw away music.
I blame streaming partially for that. You basically get paid 10 times less than before for the same work. Of course, they release more music and more diluted music every year to get at least the same kind of money.
Comes down to perceived value. and frankly we the consumers don’t VALUE the music the same way we used to. Whens the last time you actually purchased music vs streamed it for free somewhere? The market is just adjusting to that. Physical music is just about dead. So, artists create music that will resonate and get streams. Usually via singles. And when people consider music that came out last month to be “old”, an artist is then forced to put out more quantity sometimes suffering in quality.
you should take your own fucking advice cause your music has being shit for 10 years or more
What are you talking about, this dude is a bonafide classic artist, what have you put out lately,???
Learn to fucking write before you adress your opinion.