S. Mos found his calling at age 16, when he first sat down at the piano. His mother gave him a subscription to Les génies du jazz, a magazine that came with a cassette. As a result, he developed his musical culture one issue at a time. At 28, he enrolled in a Paris music school where he met the musicians who would become the members of the S. Mos Sextet. Playing an acoustic jazz-funk style, the group made two discs, Play It Loud (2004) and Head Rush (2008). In 2002, S. Mos began collaborating on keyboards with the DJ/scratch collective Birdy Nam Nam, which led to his developing an interest in rap. The idea of an encounter between the greats of jazz and hip-hop resulted in the album Hip-Hop and Jazz Mixed Up, released in 2010.