Mos Def: in all the noise about race in America, here's a voice that cuts through—singing, rapping, acting

JEFFREY WRIGHT: Let's start with the important question of the day: Who are you screwing?

MOS DEF: No comment. [both laugh] C'mon--let's talk about the play, man.

JW: Well, hold on. You're doing the play, Topdog/Underdog, [for which playwright Suzan Lori-Parks won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama] on Broadway, you've got a highly acclaimed album, Black on Both Sides [Rawkus, 1999], that's been out for a few years, you have a highly anticipated hip-hop/rock 'n' roll album with your new band, Black Jack Johnson, coming out later this year, you were in an Oscar-nominated movie [Monster's Ball) and you're hosting [Russell Simmons Presents) Def Poetry, a groundbreaking TV show, all simultaneously, which begs the question--

MD:--when do I sleep?

JW: When do you sleep and what are you?

MD: [both laugh] Focused. I'm a hustler. And my hustle is trying to figure out the best ways to do what I like without having to do much else.

JW: Well, aside from you, what's the common denominator between all these projects?

MD: They all have a voice. You know, I've done some standard Hollywood fare, like Showtime, the film I did with Robert De Niro, and a romantic comedy with Sanaa Lathan and Taye Diggs [due out this fall] called Brown Sugar-

JW:--I forgot to mention those.

MD: I plug myself. [Wright laughs] And the thing all these projects have in common is that even if I wasn't a part of them, I'd be a fan of them.

JW: You seem to be very well placed among a group of emerging voices. Do you consider yourself part of an artistic movement?

MD: I'm serious about everything I'm doing, but I don't get into this whole messianic thing where it's like, "We're coming to revolutionize the world." I'm just trying to be true to who I am. And I work with artists who think that way, too. I feel kinship with Outkast, with [Talib] Kweli, Black Thought, Jay-Z, Fishbone, Living Color, anybody that's being honest. It sounds corny, but it's true.

JW: Is that honesty innate in American popular culture or is it some kind of counterculture?

MD: I think it's a counterculture. And that's good, because it's challenging popular culture. It's like the difference between Hollywood and Sundance: Hollywood comes to Sundance looking for a certain quality of work that has traditionally existed outside of the Hollywood system. So the counterculture--Sundance--is challenging the popular culture-Hollywood--in a way that makes the popular culture better. It's not about eliminating the popular culture, because there are a lot of good things in it.

JW: So the implication isn't that popular culture is more founded in lies?

MD: I think it's founded on the bottom line--money. I understand where Hollywood and a lot of popular culture comes from--they spend a bunch of money, and they've got to make it back. My problem with it is that there's no dynamism. I think popular culture needs to make space for divergent views and ideas, allow them to get some airtime.

JW: Does that imply that these divergent views aren't about making money?

MD: It's always about making money--this is show business--and there's nothing wrong with that. But what will you do for money? Are you going to take a job you hate because it pays well, or are you going to find a job where you do what you love and make money that way? People should be able to pay their bills from their art.

JW: Hip-hop is, in many people's eyes, a counterculture--counter to traditional American values--and so much of the hiphop that gets airtime speaks to the themes of money and the power and necessity of extravagance. It seems to me it's a particularly American art form in that way, and for that reason I think it's not so revolutionary--or at least it's not running counter to what it is alleged to be running counter to.

MD: That's a good point. What happens in hiphop happens in the rest of popular culture, but on a much more clandestine level. For the most part, a rock artist is not going to sing about money and materialism, but the suggestion is there in their videos, photo shoots and public presentation. The hip-hop artist is honest enough, or in some cases oblivious enough, to talk about his aspirations. "I want money," "I want out the ghetto," "I want this," "I want that." Hip-hop exposes that gold-rush fever that's in all of the music business--a rock band, jazz band or whatever band, they're all thinking the same thing: I want to get paid. I want to be a star. With hip-hop, there's no cover on it, and in that sense I think it's revolutionary because it raises the issue of materialism in America--not just in hip-hop--and it's being said in raw, straight talk by young, poor people.

JW: Young, poor, black people. So the revolutionary idea is that young, poor, black people are talking about extravagance?

MD: That's it. That's the real deal.

JW: You know, I have a personal peeve with what's been happening with hip-hop and the diamond fetish within the community. I went to Sierra Leone a few months ago when I finished shooting Ali--we shot the "Rumble in the Jungle" scenes in Mozambique, and I traveled around a bit afterwards. I had been following the war there, which was rooted in the diamond trade. I saw many things, but most striking was an 11-month-old girl who'd had her arm chopped off. The rebels were attempting to alter free elections. They went out, many of them young boys, and just brutalized people, most of whom will never see a diamond in their lives. Now, I understand why white American culture would fetishize a diamond, because historically it's never shown concern about the lives of African people, or the ramifications of its wealth, but I wonder: In young black American culture right now, do folks not perceive a connection to Africa that may color their perception of the value of the diamond, do they just not care, or are they ignor ant?