Mos Def’s ‘Black On Both Sides’ Gets 25th-Anniversary Vinyl Reissue
To celebrate the acclaimed record’s milestone, only 3,000 copies of the special edition will be pressed.
Mos Def’s Black On Both Sides is getting a vinyl reissue to celebrate its 25th anniversary. The new collectors edition is limited to just 3,000 copies.
The new reissue is the latest from monthly subscription service Interscope Vinyl Collective, which “celebrates the legacies of Interscope’s most essential acts while introducing timeless albums to a new generation.”
Black on Both Sides is Yasiin Bey’s debut solo studio album, released following his success with Talib Kweli as Black Star. To craft the record he worked with a mix of established and up-and-coming producers, including DJ Premier, A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Mohammed, 88-keys, Ayatollah, Diamond D, and jazz icon Weldon Irvine. He explored flows and rhythms reminiscent of spoken-word poetry, and emphasized live instrumentation in the production.
“In the early ’90s, when I really started to find my voice, I was reading a lot of books, and I was moved by the writers, like Chinua Achebe,” he told Spin in 2009. “I wanted to be able to write rhymes that were as potent as what I was reading.”
To celebrate the album’s 20th anniversary, Bey performed it live in full at New York’s Brooklyn Steel alongside duo Camp Lo.
