“I write a rhyme, sometimes won't finish for days / Scrutinize my literature from the large to the miniature.”

To be an MC — at least in the way expressed above — is an arduous and relentless endeavor. Even if you have the gift of gab as a lyricist, there’s still a discipline necessary to craft the words one envisions in their head, put pen to paper and articulate it as a piece of music.

Mos Def, now known as yasiin bey, set out to do exactly that — not just for the song he uttered these lines on, “Hip Hop,” but for 16 others that made up his debut album, 1999’s Black on Both Sides. Ambitious, eloquent and fun, bey would release this album on the storied Rawkus Records, the hip-hop label that released other beloved projects throughout the late ‘90s and 2000s, including Company Flow’s Funcrusher Plus, bey’s and Talib Kweli’s Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star, Pharoahe Monch’s Internal Affairs, Big L’s posthumous The Big Picture, Kweli’s Quality and Kool G Rap’s The Giancana Story.

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