#20, “Umi Says,” Mos Def/Yasiin Bey (1999)

150 Favorite Songs: #20, “Umi Says,” Mos Def/Yasiin Bey (1999)

It’s hard to overstate what a revelation Black On Both Sides, the debut solo album by Yasiin Bey (who, at the time, went by Mos Def), was for me. Listening to it twenty-five years later, it’s still a masterpiece of ambition. The album opens with a mix of stuttering drums and beatboxing, and Bey sets a tone by talking over it in a way that seems meandering until you realize that you’re already deep into the song, that he’s explaining something that will lead into the opening rap, before taking you on a genre-bending tour de force that really was not something rappers did in 1999. There are hard beats and songs with Busta Rhymes and Q-Tip; there are R&B-tinged love songs and tracks built around sped-up soul samples years before anyone would know who Kanye West was; there are laid-back with fuzzed-out bass tracks that let Bey show you that he’s as capable as a singer as he is as a rapper; there are songs that sound downright prescient in addressing political issues that’d be coming down the pike (an entire song in 1999 about the coming twenty-first century water shortages!); there are tracks that dip into rock music (he opens “Brooklyn” by singing the hook to “Under the Bridge” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers) and others that embrace it fully (listen to “Rock n Roll” if you’ve never heard it, and please stick around for the entire song). I just found it dazzling that one artist could have this much inside of him, could be interested in so many different things and have so many different ways to express them. I would waver on which song was my favorite; sometimes it was the mind-blowing aspects of “Rock n Roll,” sometimes it was the valedictory knowledge-drop of “Mathematics,” sometimes it was the subversive insight of “New World Water,” sometimes it was the funky soul and undeniable hook of “Ms. Fat Booty.”

Over the years, though, my answer to that question found a clear answer, and it’s a song I didn’t pay very much attention to when I was nineteen. It’s “Umi Says,” which is, I think, one of the finest songs ever written about a tension that is very real, but also hard to express: That of wanting to be useful to the world, of not wanting to hide your light under a bushel, of seeing an imperfect world and knowing that you, just by being a person in it, can contribute in some way to making it a little bit better—and also of feeling overwhelmed by all of those imperfections, and of simply being one person, and of knowing that a finite life means that there is a real and valid appeal in simply trying to enjoy what you can quietly, and endure what’s painful stoically. Bey spends the song’s verses, which are sung/rapped/spoken over a jazz backdrop led by the Hammond organ of Weldon Irvine—Nina Simone’s bandleader—with a young Will.I.Am on piano, opining on that inner conflict. sometimes i don’t wanna be bothered / sometimes i just want a quiet life / me and my babies, me and my lady / sometimes i don’t wanna get into no war, he sings in the second verse, before going into a hook that washes those concerns out: my umi said shine your light on the world / shine your light for the world to see, he sings, my abi said shine your light on the world, he repeats/ my jiddo said shine your light on the world. my elders said shine your light on the world.  He uses the Arabic word for mother, father and grandfather, tying the tension in the verses to the responsibilities passed on to us by the people who came before us, and the hope that every grown person sees in every young person.

By the end of the second run through that hook, Bey has some clarity. A bridge that was five lines long in between verses one and two takes over the rest of the song, with him riffing on the line that i want black people to be free, to be free, to be free until the song fades out.

I first really noticed “Umi Says” when watching Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, which is a very joyful movie from 2005 in which Chappelle doesn’t say anything about trans people and Kanye West doesn’t say anything about Jewish people and Talib Kweli doesn’t harrass a single black woman on social media, and which I will probably still not be able to watch in 2024 because of what those guys spend their time doing now. In the movie, a concert film about a festival Chappelle hosted in 2004, Bey’s performance of the song runs for nine minutes and includes Questlove on drums, while Common and Kweli just sit onstage feeling the performance. The filmmaker intercuts footage of Bey introducing Fred Hampton Jr. to the other artists at the festival, explaining to them what happened to Hampton’s father, the martyred Black Panther, into the film, with just the drum track tying the footage together; when it cuts back to the concert, Bey introduces Hampton on stage, leading the crowd in a call for freedom that sounds like the one that ends the version on the record, but feels more alive and joyful—Common and Kweli, seemingly moved by the spirit of the song, get up and start bouncing around, joining Bey on the final call to action. It’s a striking moment that makes a song I’d heard many many times feel impossibly vibrant, and makes the tension between the verses and the choruses feel downright triumphant.

Of course you shine your light on the world. Of course you do. That’s what Yasiin Bey is doing right in front of you when you listen to it. You can feel the importance of the song’s message simply by the fact that it made its way to your ears at all. It’s magic.