![]() ![]() In the opinion of Time's Josh Tyrangiel, his political meditations may not appeal to conservatives but are rich in "the rhythm, exuberance and wit Mos Def showed on his early records". Writing for MSN Music, Christgau felt the songs are "devoid of hooks but full of sounds you want to hear again", along with "thoughtfully slurred" yet intelligible lyrics by Mos Def, whose creative vision warrants the introductory Malcolm X sample. Ben Thompson, in The Observer, believed the diverse range of samples make it "a crate-digger's wet dream" and "a thrillingly accessible demonstration of hip-hop's limitless creative possibilities" to a layperson. Mick Middles from The Quietus appraised it as "the joyful sound of a rampant artist, unrestrained by expectation or commercialism", with free-flowing music that escapes the boundaries his previous albums had merely pushed. For The Irish Times, Jim Carroll said the rapper has not performed this engagingly or skillfully since his career beginnings, highlighting especially "Supermagic" and "Life in Marvelous Times". In The New Yorker, The Ecstatic was hailed as Mos Def's "most conceptually knotty and ambitious work", while Aaron wrote in Spin that the "internationalist return to form" is also "perhaps his liveliest work". People who envisioned those were considered radical or extreme." "I don't rap like nobody, I don't try to sound like nobody." He said "the ecstatic" also refers to "a type of devotional energy, an impossible dream that becomes reality but is discredited before it's realized. "I feel like I was the only person who was capable of making this type of music in this type of way", he claimed. The phrase resonated with him, as he believed no one else in hip hop had ever recorded an album like The Ecstatic. 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". 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. The Ecstatic was titled after Victor LaValle's 2002 dark humor novel. While touring with him as his DJ, Preservation began to develop remixes of the album’s songs, which he later released on the remix album The REcstatic in 2013.Mos Def, The Ecstatic Full Album Zipl !!INSTALL!! He embarked on an international tour to support the record, performing concerts in North America, Japan, Australia, and the United Kingdom between September and April 2010. A widespread critical success, The Ecstatic was viewed as a return to form for Mos Def and one of the year’s best albums. 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. Released on June 9, 2009, The Ecstatic charted at number nine on the Billboard 200 and eventually sold 168,000 copies. Mos Def titled The Ecstatic after one of his favorite novels-the 2002 Victor LaValle book of the same name-believing its titular phrase evoked his singular creative vision for the album. Its loosely structured, lightly reverbed songs used 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’s raps about global politics, love, spirituality, and social conditions were informed by the zeitgeist of the late 2000s, Black internationalism, and Pan-Islamic ideas, as he incorporated a number of Islamic references throughout the album. The Ecstatic was described by music journalists as a conscious and alternative Hip Hop record with an eccentric, internationalist quality. For its front cover, a still from Charles Burnett’s 1978 film Killer of Sheep was reproduced in red tint. Singer Georgia Anne Muldrow, formerly of the record label, was one of the album’s few guest vocalists, along with rappers Slick Rick and Talib Kweli. Flash, Oh No, and Madlib, the latter two of whom re-used instrumentals they had produced on Stones Throw Records. He worked with producers such as Preservation, Mr. After venturing further away from Hip Hop with an acting career and two poorly received albums, Mos Def signed with Downtown Records and recorded The Ecstatic primarily at the Record Plant in Los Angeles. The Ecstatic is the fourth studio album by Mos Def. ![]()
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