Fresh Picks: Mos Dub

By Coby Gerstner

One of the best things about remixes is that they make old things new again.  You add a new element to a song, tweak it, and it becomes something that the artist never imagined.  Mos Def is a Hip Hop artist from Brooklyn, NY.  He began rapping with a group called Urban Thermo Dynamics – which was underground hip hop.  But, in 1998, he and Talib Kweli formed the group Blackstar.  You, along with many others, may have found yourself singing the line, “1,2,3, Mos Def and Talib Kweli.”  A breathe of fresh air in a stagnant Hip Hop scene, Mos Def has always been true to himself – cultivating the art of hip hop rather than trying to sell records through uninspired lyrics and stale topics.

The fresh picks I’m bringing you today come from Max Tannone – a local to NYC, remix artist, producer, and DJ.  If you know him, you know him from his album Jaydiohead.  If you don’t know Jaydiohead, please check it out as well.  But back to the beauty of remixes and our feature today.  Max Tannone – who you can follow on twitter @maxtannone and has a new album coming out June 12th – brought Dub (think Reggae) and Mos Def together to create something that they never could have been themselves.  Mos Dub is the result of the not just the marriage of two separate songs, it is fusing the genius of one of the greatest MC’s of the 90’s and 2000’s with the ahead of it’s time sound of dub. For your listening enjoyment – and as a free download – Mos Dub

Tannone writes (of Mos Dub),”I was listening to a lot of dub music and felt really inspired.  I realized there were a lot of parallels between how the originators of dub (engineers and producers) became artists in their own right and what I wanted to accomplish.  As I uncovered more great material, I wanted to experiment with it.  Mos Dub was the result.”

So, while not in the traditional sense of new music, Mos Dub is something that you would benefit from checking out – it’s as fresh as they come.