The Roots continue to amaze the NYC-based crowds at their weekly residency at Highline Ballroom. You never know what to expect each week, and recently the sold out crowd was blessed by an appearance from the Black Dante himself, Mos Def. They tore through some hip hop classics covers, Double Trouble, Casa Bey and a jammed out version of Umi Says. As always, the Jams are not rehearsed and done completely on the fly. Without further ado, here’s ATWL/TheRootsLive.com’s exclusive recording of Umi Says and Double Trouble from The Jam (FYI you can hear Black Thought spit a verse from The Roots’ new single during the Umi Says performance). Also check out Mos Def and The Roots performing Casa Bey on the Jimmy Fallon show here.
Blackstar held a doubleheader reunion show in the heart of Times Square in NYC this weekend and tore down Nokia Theatre. The duo celebrated the 10th anniversary release of their classic album by performing their hits as well their popular solo material. The crowd was live, the vibes were good and hip-hop was most definitely in the building. Since everyone couldn’t all be there for this memorable night, AllTheWayLive is proud to exclusively present the full, complete audio of their 2nd set of the night for your listening pleasure.
Whenever Mos Def performs with The RCDC Experiment, its always a mesmerizing, incredible experience. This was no exception as Mos Def took the stage at the illustrious Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. last year, backed not only by The RCDC Experiment, but also a 9 piece horns section and a 10 piece orchestra, collectively The Amino Alkaline Orchestra and Watermelon Syndicate. The show was phenomenal, but my personal highlight was a performance of an unreleased song, “M.D. (Doctor)” played to the music of David Axelrod’s groovy “Holy Thursday” (one of my favorite songs and also sampled on Lil Wayne’s “Dr. Carter”). Keeping the doctor theme, Mos’ lyrics expose the shady aspects of the medical world and questions the ethics of the industry… its powerful stuff. Here we have an exclusive recording of the song being performed at The Kennedy Center from September 22nd, 2008 as well as audio and video of another rendition of the song from the Cape Town Jazz Festival from this past April courtesy of the good folks over at Frolab.
Earlier this year, Mos Def did an incredible run of six intimate shows at New York’s legendary jazz club, The Blue Note. Black Dante was backed by remarkably talented RCDC Experiment for the occasions (Robert Glasper, Chris Dave, Casey Benjamin & Derrick Hodge) and they put on some of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time. Previously, I had shared “Fantastic” from the first of the six shows, but the true highlight was the cover of Kanye West’s “Say You Will”. The interpretation was beautfiul, with jazzy solos from Robert Glasper and Marc Cary, who also sat in on keys for this song. Mos even peppered in verses from “U R The One”, which fit perfectly in the context of the heartbreak motif. This exclusive 12 min rendition will definitely go down as one of the gems on this site, I cant recommend this enough.
As I was going through my archive this morning, I came across this song and realized that I have never heard it before, and as far as I can tell, is unreleased. Mos’ flow on this is crazy and I hope this is properly released at some point. His highly anticipated, yet oft-delayed new album, The Ecstatic, is set to be released on June 9th on Downtown Records. I can’t wait.
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