By Brian Ives
In a new interview posted to the Beats By Dre YouTube page, hip-hop artist and actor Yasiin Bey (the artist formerly known as Mos Def) sounds off, sort of, on why he left the U.S.
His departure became an issue last year, when he had to cancel a festival appearance because he apparently couldn’t get back into the country. (However, that problem seems to have been rectified, as he’s recently performed in the U.S., including a May 1 show at the Metro in Chicago.)
“As an artist and as a human being, working in the way that I work in the world today,” he said. “It’s really America’s a very challenging place for me. Sure, there’s great business opportunities, familiarity and all that. But given the current social, political, economic climate, it’s very difficult. Unnecessarily difficult. To create to the degree of fullness, the type of robust, type of creativity that I like to have, it’s very difficult for me to produce that here.”
Related: Mos Def Cancels Festival Appearance Because He Can’t Get Into the U.S.
By “here,” he may have meant that he was actually in the U.S. while doing the interview, as the video’s information section says, “The legend Yasiin Bey sat down at #BeatsHQ for an exclusive interview.” But he doesn’t elaborate on what it is about the current social, political and economic climate that makes it difficult to work as an artist.
And even though he’s not living in the States anymore, he says that his output will likely get slower in the years to come, and it may not resemble his classic material from the late ’90s and early ’00s.
“What people are gonna hear from me now, or in the future, is much different than what they heard in 1999 or even what they heard in 2009… I’m different, the times are different, my skill level is different: it’s more enhanced, because I’ve had so much time and opportunity to do it and get better at it,” he said. “The writing process has become positively slower. Not in the sense that it’s harder for me to come up with material, but that I find myself these days spending more time on one piece. ”
Bey, who is said to live in Cape Town, South Africa, today, has a very “one-world” view, and he hopes he can inspire fans to see the world in the same way as he does. “Earth is a very big and open place. That doesn’t mean I don’t value my family or my audience here in America. It’s just that I needed to take some time to put myself in environments where I felt good.
“I’m just being real. It does something to me: the whole s—, Yemen, Iraq, Baltimore, on and on. This is not some isolated moment in history: this is a continuum of something that’s completely wack to begin with. I’m critical of all of the governments around the world, and the corporations. With that being said, my country is called ‘earth.’ This whole thing belongs to everybody that’s on it. And if there’s anything I can do with my career, it’s hopefully to encourage the generations around me, and after me, to have that worldview.”
