Mos Def @ House of Blues Boston

Last night was the Mos Def (or Mo' Def, as pronounced by a scalper on Lansdown) Ecstatic Tour show at the House of Blues...so fucking incredible.

I wasn't on the center floor, but the vantage point we had was probably better anyway, considering the collective heights of myself and the friends I was with. Anyway, this may be the best hip hop show I've seen that didn't use a live band (i.e. some Roots concerts of old).

Missed the opener, but Talib started it off with a very solid set that covered a wide range of his material. It definitely pumped up the crowd--there was a ton of energy in the place by the time he stepped off.

Unfortunately though, there was long layover between Talib and Mos that I think kind of killed some of the hype and momentum. Regardless, Mos came on around 10:30 (I think?) and that changed very quickly. There was a drum set on stage, and he began with some of his songs from the Eclectic while rocking the drums also. The intensity only elevated from there.

This may have been the longest MC set I've seen, but even though I was pretty tired and physically spent coming in, I really didn't want it to end. After Mos covered a lot of his Eclectic material (including my two favs from the album--Priority and Life in Marvelous Times--back to back), he slipped in and out of some older stuff, mixing it up with the DJ on stage (who was great in his own right). Then Talib came out for a little Black Star madness, kicking in with Re: DEFinition. Black Star is one of my favorite hip hop albums of all time, so this was a pretty amazing experience for me.

I figured that they'd just do a Black Star set, maybe an encore, and that would be the show. Nope. After Talib stepped off, we were only just halfway. The second half of the show was the highlight for me, even though I was pretty drained. Mos covered EVERYTHING, including some his best from Black On Both Sides like Umi Says and Ms. Fat Booty (both of which got the crowd really hyped). And when Mos went into MJ's Billie Jean, that pretty much killed me. Sooo nice.

An unlikely highlight for me was the song "Quiet Dog Bite Hard" from The Eclectic, which wasn't one of my favorite songs on the album. Mos took up the drums again towards the end for that song, though, and he was ridiculous. Eclectic is right. One of the highest energy parts of the show, in my opinion, although I noticed the crowd was fading a bit by that point.

In the end, the show from when Mos Def came on was about two hours long. No encore, but even though I was absolutely drained (and the crowd too, it seemed), I would have welcomed another hour of Mos. Unbelievable.