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Mos Def, the hip-hop star from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, is coming to Broadway, and from the way some people reacted to the news, you would have thought the next Zero Mostel had been plucked from the checkout line at a Key Food. "Mos What?" asked the Post.
Yet Mos Def, born Dante Smith and 28 years old, has been acting since his teens, appearing in everything from episodes of The Cosby Mysteries to Spike Lee's Bamboozled to a Visa commercial with Deion Sanders. He has a small part as Billy Bob Thornton's mechanic in Monster's Ball, and he plays a bad guy in Showtime, the new Eddie Murphy, Robert De Niro comedy. He also did a horror film with Malcolm McDowell called Island of the Dead, though he hadn't seen it.
"S.T.V.," Mos Def explained the other day, seated on a couch at the Time Hotel on 49th Street. Island of the Dead, he said, had gone straight to video.
Across the street, however, Mos Def was preparing to debut at the Ambassador Theatre, playing Booth to Jeffrey Wright's Lincoln in Topdog/Underdog, Suzan-Lori Parks' simmering play about two street- hustler brothers living in New York. Set to premiere on April 7 and directed by George C. Wolfe, Topdog enjoyed a strong run at the Public Theater last summer, where Don Cheadle played Booth. Mr. Cheadle was supposed to follow the play to Broadway last fall, but when it was delayed after Sept. 11 and the actor found himself committed to other obligations, Mr. Wolfe hired Mos Def to step in.
Landing the job had been the easy part. Mos Def was at first staggered by Mr. Wolfe and Mr. Wright, heavyweights both. "As we were getting into rehearsals, I was like, 'Oh, fuck, I'm really playing with the Duke Ellington Orchestra,'"hesaid. "There's a reason why everybody doesn't play with the Duke Ellington Orchestra. It's beautiful music; it's just not easy to play."
He was getting more comfortable, though. Mr. Wright, a Tony Award winner for Angels in America, said that Mos Def, who is younger than Mr. Cheadle, brought a "vulnerability...