It's a fact: eventually, your favorite artists let you down. Like Mos Def, for instance. Back when he was in Black Star, and when he dropped Black on Both Sides, I had him pegged as a major new voice in hip hop. A very long ten years followed in which he did a lot of acting and a couple of albums that, to my ears, betrayed the promise in those first two missives.
So when I heard initial rumblings that The Ecstatic was reason to be ecstatic, I was rather cautious. Diminished expectations, I theorized, might be the determining factor in the favorable notices. After all those triumphs were a few years ago and the weaker material no doubt primed the critics to be kinder this time around, right?
Well, The Ecstatic has made a believer out of me once more. 'Magnetic, the flows are athletic,' is how he starts the song of the day, Casa Bey, and he's right on both counts. It has a busy yet spacy jazzy 70s vibe. I want to say like Andy Bey, but I don't know his material well enough to be confident in such an assessment. Kinda like Lonnie Liston Smith, at least from this listener's perspective. That he placed it at the end of the album suggests, perhaps, that he's looking forward. That he won't stop the rock. That he's got gas in his tank and he's going the distance. Enjoy.
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