Mos Def: The New Danger : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

While his rap career was cooling these past few years, Mos Def developed a reputation as a top-shelf actor, a go-to guy capable of creating deeply nuanced characterizations. That same skill proves vital to his earthy, impressively diverse second solo effort, The New Danger. Alternating between rapid-fire rhymes and lazy behind-the-beat singing, the New York rapper transforms himself a few times: He's a wise veteran of the honky-tonk circuit (the choogling blues "Black Jack"); a surly punk (on "Ghetto Rock," one of several tracks with his band Black Jack Johnson, featuring guitarist Dr. Know from Bad Brains); and on the ambling mambo "Boogie Man," he makes like the crooning Marvin Gaye to celebrate intimacy. It's all part of the Mos Def master plan to, as he explains on the gritty "Life Is Real," "reach the world but touch the street first." The fed-up rhymes and sweetly sung refrains of The New Danger do exactly that, broadening the hip-hop palette without sacrificing, or selling out, its core ideals.