‘The music industry is as cold blooded as Scrooge McDuck’: the return of rapper Yasiin Bey

Under the radar for a decade, the artist formerly known as Mos Def is back. He talks about rejection, revival, and his new partnership with the Alchemist

It’s the penultimate night of Paris fashion week, and at Le Trianon, a storied 1,000-capacity music hall beneath Montmartre, Yasiin Bey – the artist formerly known as Mos Def – is holding court. “Fashion week is exhausting, especially when you be swagging this hard,” grins the dandyish MC and sometimes streetwear designer. “People see me and be like: ‘What’s the event?’ Today. Life is the event.”

Bey is showcasing his new project, Forensics, a partnership with DJ and producer the Alchemist (Eminem, Nas, Earl Sweatshirt). Over beats steeped in psychedelia and spiritual soul, Bey skips between the personal and political with profundity, as has long been his gift. This is Bey’s deepest, most focused work in years, from Ondasz, a meditation on resistance that finds Bey reflecting: “I don’t know if Goliath made David afraid / But I do know David threw his stone anyway,” to Kidjani, a mesmerising, moving tribute to his late mother, Sheron Smith (the “Umi” in his 1999 hit Umi Says). The material signals a rebirth for an MC and movie star who, for the last decade and a half, seemed content to disappear from the limelight.

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