Mos Def took the stage this past weekend and put on a great show as usual.  He performed The Ecstatic in its entirety front-to-back, brought out Talib Kweli for History and Respiration, then Jay Electronica graced the stage to rock Exhibit A and C with Mos, Kweli and Diddy on stage as his hypemen.  Here are the two Exhibits as well as Respiration as a bonus.

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No one else celebrates the holidays and brings in the new year quite like the good folks at Okayplayer and The Roots crew.  B.B. King’s was home to the 3rd Annual OKP Holiday Jammy last month, which featured sets from the cast of Fela! The Musical, Blitz The Ambassador, Bajah + The Dry Eye Crew and of course, The Roots.  Special guests packed the venue and as usual, the show was phenomenal.  The highlights of the night were guest performances by Mos Def and Brother Ali, who rocked with The Legendary.  Here is our exclusive audio of Mos Def performing Umi Says with The Roots, and even going into some bars of 100% Dundee and Adrenaline (!!).  Next up we have Brother Ali taking the stage to do The Trap, The Travelers and freestyle with Black Thought while The Roots play The Preacher beat.  Robert Glasper, Casey Benjamin and a few other usual suspects help round out the band.

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2009 was a fantastic year for music and as we head into a new decade, its time to reflect on the best releases of the previous year.  Since the focus of this site is live music and we’re discussing studio albums here, we decided to add a new, exclusive live song from each artist who made our list.  So without further ado, here is ATWL’s Top 10 Albums and Mixtapes of the year.

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Blakroc was busy on the late night talk show scene this week with performances on Letterman on Fallon.  Joined by Mos Def and Jim Jones, they performed “Ain’t Nothing Like You (Hoochie Coo)” on Letterman, then The RZA accompanied them on Jimmy Fallon to perform “Dollaz & Sense” and “Tellin’ Me Things”.  Here’s the video and audio streams/downloads.

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From the Current TV website: “On this special hour-long Embedded, Mos Def takes us on an all access seven-day tour of Japan while he performs his new album “The Ecstatic” to packed venues in Tokyo and Osaka. During that week, he hits up the Harajuku fashion district, whoops it up at a sumo wrestling match, and gets a personal tour of the Tokyo Giants stadium from his friend and baseball phenom Mark Kroon. Then, he brilliantly ties it all together by divulging the history of great thinkers known as “ecstatics,” showing that he is clearly one of the most insightful men in hip-hop.”

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We said it was coming… and here it finally is.  Mos Def live @ Governor’s Island from The Ecstatic tour a few weeks ago.  I cant begin to count how many times I’ve seen Mos live, whether its backed by Robert Glasper and friends or with his double-DJ set up, but this tour was a bit unique for Dante.  He introduced a modified drumkit into the mix and flexed his talents by drumming while rapping/singing on many of the songs, which was really dope.  Of the shows sans his band that I’ve seen, this was hands down the best.  But dont take my word for it, check out our exclusive, high quality audio from the set (including his fantastic cover of the late Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”)

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