At the end of 2011 Mos Def is ditching his famous stage name in favor of the name Yasiin...
Mos tells Mtv2's Sucker Free show,
"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."
Mos' was born Dante Terrell Smith.
