There aren't many references to Charles Darwin in hip hop today. Hearing the chorus performed two different ways at the exact same time was unnerving, though, not unlike watching a film by Joel Schumacher and expecting it to be good: if Mos was trying to make this song appeal to an art house crowd, he succeeded, but at what cost? I liked Oh No's beat, especially the hurried drums that inform much of Dante's flow. I wouldn't necessarily bump this in my car, though. This doesn't sound the least bit bad, though, and it's fairly brief, so I kind of dig it. Mos Def raps and sings in Spanish, mainly because he fucking can. It takes Dante forever to step in and start rapping, though, so this "song" is really short, which is a plus, since I wasn't impressed at all. Flash beat in fact, it's more distracting than it should be. The goofy intro doesn't really lend itself to the Middle Eastern-inspired Mr. For fans of the beat, you get an extra minute of it at the end, so enjoy! His flow does, anyway: maybe he just wasn't acclimated to the slower pace of the track. Flash's beat manages to sound pretty, well, marvelous, but Dante's rhymes, curiously, come off as lazy. SO far, The Ecstatic is perfect for listeners with short attention spans, but that may only be because Mos Def was on a deadline and needed to rush back to the set. This is also really short, but this time, I wanted to hear more of Dante's impressive spitting over Preservation's instrumental. Thankfully, this Madlib invasion also isn't very long, lest the song's theme get stomped into the ground with the force of your girl's flip flops. Madlib's subdued beat focuses more on (a Middle Eastern-esque) melody than the drum beat, and that decision helps you pay close attention to Mos Def (who actually sounds like he put some effort into his lyrics this time around) and Slick Rick, credited on the back cover as The Ruler, comes off as, well, the Ruler he plays on TV. It helps that this comes across as alternate-universe Neptunes, even though you could still dance to this if you tried. (Remember Kenna? Because you probably should.) The song still sounds alright, though, even if Dante's rhymes sound like half-finished thoughts that could benefit from a good editor with a gaggle of red Sharpies. The beat sounds absolutely nothing like anything Chad Hugo (from production duo The Neptunes) ever produced for Kenna. I didn't care for this rap album intro masquerading as a song. Mos surrounded himself with a small dream team of collaborators who do their best to bring out the best in their gracious host: acclaimed underground producers Madlib and Oh No (Madlib's younger brother) provide a combined six tracks out of sixteen, while Chad Hugo, Talib Kweli, and the late James "J Dilla" Yancey stop by to send best wishes.
This is a far cry from his previous home, Geffen Records, who used to house acts such as Gza/Genius and The Roots but are now stuck with the likes of Common (not a bad thing, unless you are prone to involuntary recall of Universal Mind Control), Snoop Dogg, and The Game. The Ecstatic brings us The Mighty Mos on his new record label, Downtown Records, where he shares cubicle space with the likes of Gnarls Barkley, Santigold, and Carla Bruni, the current First Lady of France. That's the same reason many bloggers are plugging The Ecstatic as the best shit since sliced cheese.
And yet, he received a bigger credit than the guy who played Avon Barksdale on The Wire, mainly because he's Mos Def. It seems that Next Day Air wasn't really the right vehicle to advertise Mos Def's return to the hip hop game, especially because, as I understand it, Dante barely appears on screen. The Ecstatic is rapper-slash-singer-slash-actor Mos Def's fourth solo album, but you're forgiven if you had no idea this disc was dropping until you re-read last Sunday's Best Buy sales ad.
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