The art of rap mos def biography

Mos Def was born Dante Smith on December 11, 1973 in Brooklyn, New York. The eldest of 12 children and stepchildren, Mos Def and several of his siblings grew up with his mother in the Brooklyn projects, while several of his other siblings grew up with their father in New Jersey.

Coming of age at the height of New York City’s crack epidemic in the 1980s, a young Mos Def found himself surrounded by violence, addiction and crime. Reflecting on his childhood home, the rapper later said, “I believe the projects were a social experiment; we were laboratory rats stacked on top of each other, and people just knew, inherently, that there was something wrong.”

Yet even as a child, Mos Def was determined to overcome the circumstances of his upbringing: “I remember being seven years old and looking out that window, thinking, ‘I’m gonna make some money.’ Because we were good people.” Surrounded by hopelessness, it was easy to feel that escape from