Black Star have released their first album in 24 years.
The duo, made up of Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def) and Talib Kweli, have kept fans waiting for a follow-up to their first 1998 debut, Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star, but the Madlib produced No Fear Of Time is finally here.
Unfortunately, it is only available to stream via the podcast app Luminary, which hosts the duo’s podcasts People’s Party With Talib Kweli and The Midnight Miracle. Comedian Dave Chappelle also co-hosts the latter. Despite the album being paywalled, the duo have made the opening track ‘o.G.’ available on YouTube.
In a statement, Kweli said: “About 3-4 years ago I was visiting yasiin in Europe and we started to talk about songs to do on an album, so I flew an engineer out just to see what that would be.
“Once I realised this conversation is starting to organically become a creative conversation, I started making sure to have the engineer around at all times. There was one day we were just in a hotel listening to Madlib beats, and he’s like ‘Play that Madlib tape again.’ I’m playing the beats and he starts doing rhymes to the beats. And that’s how we did the first song.”
He continued: “This is very similar to how we did the first album. But the first album, there were no mobile studios. This entire album, we have not set foot in one recording studio. It’s all been done in hotel rooms and backstage at Dave Chappelle shows.”
Meanwhile, Bey added: “What you will continue to get out of us is a sincere expression. It’s who we really are, what we’re really responding to, and what’s really important to us.”
