During 1997, Company Flow became a minor sensation, his singles on late-night radio, his tape sneaking onto college campuses. It signaled something serious and subterranean—something El-P would go on to articulate even more fully and revealingly through his own indie imprint, Definitive Jux—but it was too weird, caustic, and disaffected with biographical fable to create a serious challenging the then status quo in a shiny suit. So Myer, Brater and Murdoch would be reaching out to someone much more sure of their own place in a hip-hop lineage.
Before signing to Rawkus, Mos Def had performed The stakes are highthe 1996 De La Soul album that became something of a talisman of the classical revival. Through his own solo debut, 1997's “Universal Magnetic”, and other appearances on SoundbombingRawkus' compilation mixtape from the same year, immediately established itself as the A talent not to be missed from his generation: technically virtuoso yet defiantly comparative, he weaves the threads of early 80s hip-hop culture into something bold and poetic and rhythmically inventive. (As with Big, there's literally no evidence that Mos, now Yasiin Bey, is anything less than a masterful musician: from the first demos, the syllables fall just like that.) So when, in 1998, Rawkus released the joint album with another Brooklyn MC, Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Starit was a real gauntlet thrown down.
Black Star it was released on the same day in September of that year as Jay's Vol. 2… Hard Knock Life and A Tribe Called Quest's The Love Movement (and, down in Atlanta, OutKast's Aquemini). “Definition” and “Respiration” weren't going to compete with “Money Cash Hoes” and “Can I Get A…” for airtime on Hot 97, but Rawkus' new distribution deal with industry giant Priority – in combined with the underground rallying around Mos as his next big hope—made it downright impressive.
Also, for reasons both within and beyond his control, he was interpreted as a direct, even combative counterpoint to the Jays and Puffs of the world. In a 2011 interview with Pitchfork, Questlove recalled a version of the famous Lyricist Lounge show series from 1997, in which Mos rapped over Slick Rick's version of “Children's Story,” which would eventually appear on Black Star. Where Rick's original was a pulp-crime classic, Mos has turned the song into a parable: Puff's transparent stand-in, fixating on the art form for profit, ends up riddled with bullets. Questlove remembers yelling, screaming, yelling at the friends he was with. he also remembers Puff, “14 deep with dudes dressed in all black,” beaming at him from the perimeter.