The crazy prolific Steely Chan’s hip-hop/ funk blender gets into full-length action here positioning yet another legendary MC from back in the day atop fat funky beats – in this case Mos Def over music culled from latterday soul king Lee Fields in the form of Mos World which you can cop below. You can blame Dangermouse for kicking this kind of practice off all those years ago with the Grey Album but who’s complaining when it’s given us recent glories such as Tom Caruana’s now legendary Wu-Tang vs. Hendrix effort Black Gold and Max Tannone’s Mos Dub? Admittedly Steely Chan aren’t raiding reggae or psychedelic electric blues rock for beats but returning to two of eighties and nineties hip-hop’s go-to genres for samples – funk and soul. But haven’t these already been sampled to death? Not if you’re sampling neo-raw funk and soul which is where the retro-head Lee Fields (or at least his band The Expressions) comes in. Cue fatback drums, whaka chocka guitars and big brass that all works best when Mos Def isn’t singing – which is most of the time on this and which, coincidentally enough, is when the Black Dante himself works best. And I’m not talking about the acting. So what does this tell us? It tells us that’s there’s a huge market out there for quality emceeing over funky beats. But why can’t we just listen to Mos Def’s originals? Well we can and do but we’ve heard them a lot and we’re hungry for new beats. But aren’t there enough quality emcees and new beats around these days? Well that’s the sixty four thousand dollar question isn’t it? There are but they don’t seem to be getting together often enough for the faithful. Until they do – here’s Mos World.
FREE DOWNLOAD – Steely Chan- Mos World HERE
FREE DOWNLOAD – Steely Chan- Mos World artwork HERE
Bush Babees & Mos Def w/ Lee Fields & The Expressions – Last Love Song (Steely Chan’s Blender Mash) by Steely Chan
Mos World: A Tribute to Mos Def, Lee Fields & The Expressions by Steely Chan
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