The artist formerly known asMos Def

Thu 8th Sep, 2011 in International News

Mos Def has announced that at the end of 2011, he will no longer go by “Mos Def” and will instead release music under the name “Yasiin.”

The rapper, whose legal name is Dante Terrell Smith, told MTV that he’s “retiring the Mos Def name after 2011. I’m actually doing it. Yasiin. That’s it.”

“Mos Def is a name that I built and cultivated over the years, it’s a name that the streets taught me, a figure of speech that was given to me by the culture and by my environment, and I feel I’ve done quite a bit with that name and it’s time to expand and move on. Also, I didn’t want to have to deal with having any moniker or separation between the self that I see and know myself as.”

The Okayplayer hip-hop site, which was co-founded by The Roots’ drummer ?uestlove, points out that Yassin is “a distinguished muslim name which has Qu’ranic significance; the “Sura Yaseen” is the 36th sura [or ‘chapter’] of the Qu’ran which states the central arguments for the belief in Allah and is considered the ‘heart of the Qu’ran’”.