Dante Terrell Smith was born on 11 December 1973 in Brooklyn, New York USA, and is better known by stage names Mos Def, Dante Beze, Yasiin Bey or Black Dante. He is most successful as a hip-hop musician but he is also a songwriter and an actor.
Mos Def Net Worth $5 Million
So how rich exactly is Mos Def? Sources estimate his current net worth to have reached the amount of $5 million. While the bigger part of his net worth has been accumulated from his career as a rapper, his acting career has significantly added to that impressive amount.
Mos Def started his career as a rapper in the band named UTD (Urban Thermo Dynamics) with two of his younger siblings, Derente and Ces in 1994. They released one album entitled “Manifest Destiny” (in 2004, when Mos Def was fairly known as a member of another band). Since 1996 he has also been working on his own, collaborating with Da Bush Babees and De La Soul.
The breakthrough in Mos Def’s music career happened with the creation of “Black Star” – the rap group with Talib Kweli. His first debut album as a solo artist was entitled “Black on Both Sides”, it came out in 1999. His next album, The New Danger, was even more successful than the first one and was even been nominated for a few Grammy awards in 2004. It was probably his most colourful album in terms of genre variety – it had blues, soul and rock elements among others.
Despite being mostly recognised as a hip-hop performer, a big part of Mos Def’s success and net worth comes from his acting career. It began with small roles in TV comedies, movies and theatre performances while he was still a child (credited as Dante Beze at that time). In 1997 he appeared in Michael Jackson‘s short horror film “Ghosts”. After a few years, he landed a role that earned him a little bit more recognition – he appeared in the romantic comedy “Brown Sugar”, which has been nominated for several awards. One of his more impressive movie roles that might have had an influence on his fame and net worth was his appearance as Ford Prefect in the science fiction film “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” in 2005. A year after that, Mos Def appeared in several episodes of cult TV series “House” and in 2011 he appeared on another extremely popular TV show “Dexter” as Brother Sam.
In his personal life, Mos Def has been married twice and has six children. He married his first wife Maria Yepes in 1996, and they have two daughters – Jauhara and Chandani Smith. The couple divorced in 2006. He is NOW married to model Alana Wyatt even though they have lived separately since 2012. Mos Def is also known as an activist against racism and violence towards African American people in USA. He has also openly expressed his opinion about the dangers of Nuclear Weapons, on “Real Time” in 2009.
