Sixteen years after it first bent the ears of hip-hop heads and jazz nerds alike, The Ecstatic is finally coming back into the world where it belongs — on vinyl, in your hands, and unshackled from the out-of-print purgatory it’s been trapped in for well over a decade.

yasiin bey, the artist formerly known as Mos Def, has announced a new partnership with Minneapolis independent stalwart Rhymesayers Entertainment. The first order of business? A proper worldwide reissue of his critically adored 2009 album The Ecstatic, arriving on all physical formats August 14th. It’s the first time the record will be available for global distribution in more than fifteen years. Streaming, meanwhile, is being handled exclusively through Qobuz, which is offering the album in high-resolution lossless audio starting today.

The pairing makes a certain kind of sense. Rhymesayers has spent three decades building one of independent hip-hop’s most respected homes, and Qobuz has quietly become the streaming platform of choice for listeners who care about fidelity — and for artists who care about getting paid fairly. In March 2025, Qobuz became the first streaming service to have its per-stream payout rate independently audited, clocking in at $0.01873, officially the highest in the industry. For an artist like bey, who has spent his career loudly advocating for creator rights and artistic integrity, this alliance is less a business deal than a mission statement.

Originally released on Downtown Records a full decade after his landmark solo debut Black on Both Sides, The Ecstatic was hailed on arrival as bey’s most vital work in years. It earned a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Album and wove together jazz, soul, and Middle Eastern textures across a producer roster that reads like a golden-era wish list: Madlib, J Dilla, Oh No, Preservation, Mr. Flash, Chad Hugo of The Neptunes, and Georgia Anne Muldrow. Guest verses from Slick Rick and Talib Kweli sealed the deal.

The reissue treats the album with the reverence it’s always deserved. A deluxe package houses double LP 180-gram black vinyl alongside a translucent red 7-inch single featuring two previously unreleased bonus tracks, “The Size” and “The Tournament.” It’s bundled with a 120-page hardcover book stuffed with photographs by Cognito, who spent two years documenting bey during the album’s original creation and rollout, plus lyric excerpts and handwritten notes from the era. Every vinyl order comes with an instant digital download of the full album.

Hearing “Supermagic,” “Quiet Dog Bite Hard,” and the Grammy-nominated “Casa Bey” pressed back to analog is the kind of small victory that reminds you why formats matter in the first place. The warmth of that production — the crackle, the bass, the low-end swirl of Madlib’s beats — was engineered for wax.

Revisit the video for “Casa Bey” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkv10OTGsVY

Physical pre-orders are live now at https://rse.lnk.to/TheEcstatic, and Qobuz is offering free trial subscriptions with unlimited access to The Ecstatic and more than 100 million other tracks at https://try.qobuz.com/waves. Fans can also head to CasaBey.com for further announcements and exclusive apparel.

bey is currently on tour with longtime collaborators Gorillaz, and continues to release new music and monthly livestreamed performances through his Substack, yasiin bey presents: The Local Time is Always Now. If this reissue is the opening statement of the Rhymesayers partnership, whatever comes next should be worth paying very close attention to.