Black Star – the duo of Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def) and Talib Kweli – have released their first album since 1998’s ‘Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star’.
After announcing the record last month, the Madlib-produced ‘No Fear Of Time’ is out now. It’s available to stream exclusively via the podcast app Luminary, which hosts the duo’s podcasts People’s Party With Talib Kweli and The Midnight Miracle, the latter co-hosted by comedian Dave Chappelle.
When they announced the album last month, the duo explained that ‘No Fear Of Time’ had been recorded in various locations, from hotels to dressing rooms, but never in an actual recording studio.
While the album is being paywalled via the app, the duo have made one of its tracks – opener ‘o.G.’ – available for listening with a lyric video on YouTube. You can check that out below, and if you’re a Luminary subscriber, you can, of course, listen to ‘No Fear Of Time’ here.
“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,” Kweli said in a statement.
“Once I realized 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.”
Kewli 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.”
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.”
In addition, a new episode of The Midnight Miracle titled ‘Bugs Bunny Mathematicx’ serves as “audio liners notes to introduce the album”, going deeper on how the duo created their first record together in two and a half decades.
The post Black Star share ‘No Fear Of Time’, first new album in 24 years appeared first on NME.
