Sometime around 2002, a good 3 years after this, this was released, I became acquainted with the work of Mos Def for the first time. The tracks to first gain my attention were 'Umi Says', 'Mathematics' and 'Rock 'N Roll'. I'd heard the former at a party during a friend's DJ set at a party, and the other two tracks online somewhere, and bought the album on the strength of those songs.
However, it wasn't until around 2005-ish that I really started getting into the album, though. On my holiday to Japan that summer, I played it to death on my mp3 player, which is partly why I associate this album with sunshine (it just doesn't sound right in the winter or on cloudy days).
Whenever I hear 'Black on Both Sides', not only do I think of the summer, I think of parties, I think of when I used to drop songs from the album into my own DJ sets, of feeling almost indestructible walking the streets with it on my headphones. It is therefore unfortunate that none Mos Def's albums (with the exception of his Black Star collaboration with Talib Kweli) came anywhere close to this.
In spite of that, BOBS is, for me, a masterpiece of a record, an exceptional debut and an album that holds a lot of happy memories.
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