Yasiin Bey was a successful child actor long before he found rap stardom. For a little while in the ’00s, it looked like the man then known as Mos Def might become a full-on movie star, as well. Instead, Bey stepped away from public life, and he’s only now starting to reemerge. Bey recently did a podcast with Dave Chappelle and his old rap partner Talib Kweli, and he and Kweli also shared a new Black Star song. Today, Rolling Stone reports that Bey will return to the screen in a forthcoming biopic about the jazz great Thelonious Monk.
Bey will play the title role in Thelonious, a new film written by the first-time screenwriter and producer Peter Lord Morgan, previously a songwriter who penned #1 hits for Paula Abdul. Lord Moreland and Alberto Marzan’s production company Jupiter Rising Film is set to go into production on Thelonious next summer. Bey hasn’t had a film role since his brief cameo in the 2016 French drama Tour De France.

In a statement that seems fully in character, Bey tells Rolling Stone, “A leader.A Lord.A shape in space.A man from a community of devotion who lives a simple life distant from society.The adjectives.can never be nouns.Love.is a verb.The Future has already happened.And Forever.is a current event.Jupiter and team.”

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