Black Star announce first album in 24 years, 'No Fear of Time,' produced by Madlib
Black Star, the legendary underground rap duo of Yasiin Bey (fka Mos Def) and Talib Kweli, have been teasing a long-awaited followup to their classic 1998 debut Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star since 2018, and they previewed new music last year, and now the album has been officially announced. It’s called No Fear of Time and it arrives May 3 via podcasting platform Luminary. As teased, Madlib produced the entire thing. In a statement, Talib 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 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.
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.
Watch the trailer for the album:
