Our group chose the man known to many in the hip-hop world as Mos Def. He is known to be a superb lyricist, poet and actor. We are performing two of his works entitled “Hip-Hop” from his album Black on Both Sides and a poem he wrote in reference to the Barclays Center entitled “On center.stadium.status”. Before I talk about these two works of art, let me give a brief overview of Mos Def. Mos Def's parents named him Dante Terrell Smith on December 11, 1973. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Mos def is one of 12 siblings, including half-siblings. Mos Def and several of his siblings lived with his mother in Brooklyn. The others continued to live with their father in New Jersey. He grew up in New York when crack became the big drug market in the 1980s, a period during which he was besieged by violence, addiction and crime, but he never succumbed to its influences. At nine years old, he began to enjoy theater and hip-hop. According to "Mos Def Biography" on Bio.com, his first play was in fifth grade, a school production, "Free to Be….You and Me" and during his junior year in high school he got his first acting role. professional actor. in the TV movie God Bless the Child. During his senior year, he won a recurring role on the television series You Take the Kids. A year later, he landed a role in The Cosby Mysteries. According to IMDb, Mos Def is a vegetarian and in September 2011 he announced that he had adopted the name Yasiin Bey and would stop using the name Mos Def by the end of the year. He is also known as Pretty Flaco, Flaco Bey, The Mighty Mos Def and Bezé. According to Gale's biography in the context of Mos Def, in his early twenties he changed his name to Mos Def, which is the abbreviation of his favorite saying. --"most accurate... middle of paper ......s; "My work is a reflection of the human condition," says Mos Def. "I don't want to hurt anyone. I don't want to mislead people. I want to tell the truth. Not all my songs are happy. Some of them are even aggressive – some might say mean – but we all experience these feelings in life. I'm just being honest about how I feel and what sounds and ideas were motivating me at the time." In conclusion, I think this quote summed up everything about Mos Def because all he wanted to do was 'was to make the truth known and let it be known, it's up to us Works Cited "About Mos Def.", nd Web, IMDb com, nd Web. " Newsmakers. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Biography in Context, December 7, 2013. "Mos Def Biography." December 04. 2013.