The Ecstatic is the fourth studio album by American rapper Mos Def, released on June 9, 2009, by the independent record label Downtown Records. After venturing further away from hip hop with an acting career and two poorly received albums, Mos Def signed a recording contract with Downtown and recorded "The Ecstatic" primarily at the Record Plant in Los Angeles. He worked with producers such as Preservation, Mr. Flash, Oh No, and Madlib, with the latter two reusing instrumentals they had produced on Stones Throw Records. The work of Stones Throw rapper MF DOOM was also cited by Mos Def as an influence, while singer Georgia Anne Muldrow, formerly of the record label, performed as one of the album's few guest vocalists, along with rappers Slick Rick and Talib Kweli.
Described by music journalists as a conscious and alternative hip hop record, "The Ecstatic" features an eccentric, internationalist quality. Mos Def's raps about global politics, love, war, spirituality, and social conditions are informed by the zeitgeist of the late 2000s, Black internationalism, and Pan-Islamic ideas, incorporating many Islamic references throughout the album. Its loosely structured, lightly reverbed songs use unconventional time signatures and samples taken from a variety of international musical styles, including Afrobeat, soul, Eurodance, jazz, reggae, Latin, and Middle Eastern music. Mos Def titled the album after one of his favorite novels, Victor LaValle's "The Ecstatic" (2002), believing its titular phrase evoked his singular musical vision. For the album's front cover, a still from Charles Burnett's 1978 film "Killer of Sheep" was reproduced in a red tint.
"The Ecstatic" charted at number nine on the "Billboard" 200 in its first week of release and eventually sold 168,000 copies. Its sales benefited from its presence on Internet blogs and the release of a T-shirt illustrating the record's packaging alongside a label printed with a code redeemable for a free download of the album. To further support the album, Mos Def embarked on an international tour with concerts in North America, Japan, Australia, and the United Kingdom between August 2009 and April 2010. As his DJ on the tour, Preservation began to develop remixes of the album's songs, which he later released on the remix album "The REcstatic" in 2013.
A widespread critical success, "The Ecstatic" was viewed as a return to form for Mos Def and one of the best albums from 2009, with reviewers applauding its exuberant musical feel, adventurous creative range, and shrewd lyrical performances. Some publications ranked it among the greatest albums of the 2000s decade, including "The Times" at number 30. However, it struggled to reach mainstream audiences beyond Mos Def's fan base and led the already disillusioned rapper further away from the music industry, resulting in less recorded work from him over subsequent years.
Background.
By the mid-2000s, Mos Def had established himself as one of hip hop music's leading auteurs with records that sold millions of copies while realizing a pan-African worldview, although the rapper grew increasingly wary of the music industry. In 2006, his third album "True Magic" was released haphazardly by Geffen Records to fulfill a contractual obligation while he was devoting more time to his acting career. The quality of the album, along with his repeated ventures away from recording hip hop, left "some fans wondering if Mos Def's acting accomplishments were finally affecting his music", "PopMatters" critic Quentin B. Huff chronicles. Speaking with Spank Rock for "Interview" magazine, Mos Def expressed a jadedness with the commodifying aspect of the hip hop industry and elucidated his artistic goals at the time:
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After his tenure with Geffen ended, Mos Def signed a record deal with the independent label Downtown Records and proceeded to record "The Ecstatic" as his first album for the label.
Recording and production.
Mos Def recorded most of the album in sessions at the Record Plant in Los Angeles. The songs "Twilight Speedball", "No Hay Nada Mas", and "Roses" were partially recorded at Hovercraft Studios in Virginia Beach, Someothaship Connect in Los Angeles, and New York City's Downtown Music Studios. He worked with producers Mr. Flash, Oh No, Madlib, and Preservation, who previously produced some of "True Magic"'s songs. For "The Ecstatic", Oh No reused some of his productions from his 2007 album "Dr. No's Oxperiment", while Madlib incorporated samples from him "Beat Konducta in India" (2007) record. For "Life in Marvelous Times", Mr. Flash reused the beat from "Champions" – his 2006 collaboration with the French hip hop group TTC – while "History" used a beat produced by J Dilla before his death.
With Preservation, Mos Def produced "Casa Bey" after a 2006 trip to Rio de Janeiro, where local rapper MV Bill introduced him to the music of Banda Black Rio. Mos Def and Preservation altered one of the band's songs – "Casa Forte", an instrumental featuring their characteristic blend of funk, jazz, soul, and Brazilian rhythms – and used it as the beat. The original song title – meaning "strong house" in Portuguese – was changed to "Casa Bey"; Bey was Mos Def's family surname. According to him, he tried to enlist rappers Jay Electronica, Black Thought, and Trugoy for the song, but they all found it too difficult to rap over the instrumental.
The recording sessions featured collaborations with singer Georgia Anne Muldrow and rappers Slick Rick and Talib Kweli – Mos Def's partner in the rap duo Black Star. Muldrow sang and played piano on "Roses", which she originally wrote and recorded in 2008 for her album "Umsindo" (2009). She said Mos Def "borrowed" the song for "The Ecstatic" after they met through a mutual friend. "They came over one day and started playing 'Roses.' He was singing the song and knew it. He said 'I wanna grab that.' I said, 'Man, I already got this as a single'. He just wanted that song. He snatched it up real quick", she recalled in laughter.
Along with Madlib, Oh No, and J Dilla, Muldrow had been an affiliate of Stones Throw Records; according to journalist Nathan Rabin, they collectively produced half of the album, lending its sound a "sympathetic" quality. During the recording, Mos Def was also influenced by fellow rapper MF Doom, at one point improvising raps from the latter's 2004 album "Mm..Food" while in the studio. "He rhymes as weird as I feel", he said of Doom, citing his Madlib collaboration "Madvillainy" (2004) as well. With "The Ecstatic", Mos Def said he wanted to offer listeners sincere, uninhibited observations about life and love, "some truth and positive heart lift", without the need for club songs. "No disrespect to [the club]".
Music and lyrics.
"The Ecstatic" covers an international range of styles in a very loose and extemporaneous manner, held together by what Rabin describes as "a lyrical and sonic fascination with life beyond the Western World". According to Robert Christgau, the songs average two-and-a-half minutes and segue into one another without resolution, giving it the feel of a globally influenced hip hop mixtape "with poles in Brooklyn and Beirut". The music reflects Mos Def's varied interests in jazz, poetry, Eastern rhythms, psychedelia, Spanish music, and the blues. The tracks on the first half are, as "The Observer"'s Ben Thompson describes, "predominantly Eastward-looking", while the second half indulges more in Latin and reggae influences. Other sounds sampled or explored include Afrobeat ("Quiet Dog Bite Hard"), Eurodance ("Life in Marvelous Times"), Bollywood ("Supermagic"), and Philadelphia soul. "Supermagic" also draws on elements from Turkish acid rock and "Mary Poppins", while on "No Hay Nada Mas", Mos Def sings and raps in Spanish over a flamenco-influenced production. He sings elsewhere on the album, often breaking into sing-song vamps during his raps. Along with his singing, the often sample-based music is unconventional in its use of what Preservation calls unusual time signatures and "awkward" breakdowns.
According to "The Independent"'s Simmy Richman, "The Ecstatic"'s Eastern-influenced musical backdrop is reflective of Mos Def's "post-War on Terror" themes. Richman calls it a conscious rap record, and "No Ripcord"'s Ryan Faughnder regards it as "socially conscious alternative hip-hop". African-American studies and media scholar Sohail Daulatzai believes the album is informed by Black internationalist politics and Pan-Islamic ideas, while "State" magazine's Niall Byrne says it explores the theme of international relations on songs such as the Middle Eastern-influenced "The Embassy" and "Auditorium", which features an Iraq-themed guest rap by Slick Rick. On "The Embassy", Mos Def raps from the perspective of an outsider about the lifestyle of an ambassador at a luxury hotel, while the opening song "Supermagic" critiques government treatment of minority groups. Mos Def incorporates several Islamic references throughout the album, including samples of American Muslim activist Malcolm X, Turkish protest singer Selda Bağcan, and an Arab-language scene from the 1966 film "The Battle of Algiers"; additionally, the track "Wahid" is titled after the Arabic word for "oneness".
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You're living at a time of extremism, a time of revolution, a time when there's got to be a change. People in power have misused it. And now there has to be a change and a better world has to be built and the only way it's going to be built is with extreme methods. And I, for one, will join in with anyone. I don't care what color you are, as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth. Thank you.
— 1964 Malcolm X speech sampled for the beginning of the album
As on Mos Def's other albums, he speaks a dedication to God in Arabic ("Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem") at the start of "The Ecstatic". This leads into "Supermagic" and its opening sample of Malcolm X's 1964 speech at Oxford Union. The sample prefaces the album's "small-globe statement", as "Pitchfork" journalist Nate Patrin explains, saying it indicates that Mos Def has "a stake in something greater than just one corner of the rap world". Alex Young from "Consequence of Sound" believes the speech introduces "a political album encompassing global beats and viewpoints". According to "The Washington Post" critic Allison Stewart, Mos Def seems equally interested in the Obama-era zeitgeist as in accounts of the past, such as the early-1980s Bedford–Stuyvesant setting of "Life in Marvelous Times". Young deems the song anthemic for "a seemingly paradoxical age that routinely sees events such as a Black man being elected president of a nation wallowing in racial inequality". From Christgau's perspective, Mos Def offers a credo in the lyrics: "More of less than ever before / It's just too much more for your mind to absorb / It's scary like hell, but there's no doubt / We can't be alive in no time but now".
Throughout "The Ecstatic", Mos Def alternates between what AllMusic's Andy Kellman calls nonsensical yet intellectual raps and "seemingly nonchalant, off-the-cuff boasts", set against eccentric, lightly reverbed productions. According to "The Guardian"'s Paul MacInnes, "The Ecstatic" features his characteristically "fragmented lyrical style, which loops words within phrases and plays on sound as much as meaning". "Auditorium" showcases his "complex and convoluted" lyricism delivered closely in rhythm with the beat, Patrin says, citing the lines "soul is the lion's roar, voice is the siren / I swing 'round, wring out and bring down the tyrant / chop a small axe and knock a giant lopsided". He explores Afrocentric themes on "Revelations" and compares love to a gunfight on "Pistola". On "Roses", Muldrow sings nature-friendly lyrics about drawing flowers in times of sadness rather than plucking them from the ground. "Roses is about creativity and human capacity", she explains. "A lot of times Western society makes [women] base our sense of worth on 'diamonds are forever' or 'a dozen roses' and that's how you prove your love to somebody… but you receive so many gifts and still feel empty. So draw them and let the roses come from inside."
Title and packaging.
"The Ecstatic" was titled after Victor LaValle's 2002 dark humor novel. One of Mos Def's favorite novels, it was written about an overweight college dropout who fell into mental illness while living with his eccentric family in Queens, New York. According to Mos Def, the phrase "the ecstatic" was "used in the 17th and 18th centuries to describe people who were either mad or divinely inspired and consequently dismissed as kooks". The phrase resonated with him, as he believed no one else in hip hop had ever recorded an album like "The Ecstatic".