Celebrity News

Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) keeping it trill

Yasiin Bey — formerly known as Mos Def — is down with the literary set. A poem by the rapper called “One Called Trill” has been published in the new issue of The Paris Review alongside a new story by acclaimed novelist James Salter and a piece on the SoHo art scene in the 1970s. Bey’s verse includes the word “trill” seven times. Erudite readers may read the word as a musical term, meaning vibrato or warble. Hip-hop aficionados, of course, know it’s slang for “true and real,” as in Texas rapper Bun B’s banger “II Trill.”