Black Star—the duo of Yasiin Bey and Talib Kweli—have finally announced the details of a new album. Their second full-length, No Fear of Time, arrives nearly 24 years after their 1998 debut Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star. Madlib produced the new album, which will get released on the podcasting platform Luminary on May 3. Find the album cover and a teaser below.
In a press release, Talib Kweli shared a statement about the new album:
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.
In 2018, Yasiin Bey told a crowd in Denver, Colorado that he and Talib Kweli had teamed up with producer Madlib for new material. Madlib mentioned it again the same year in his Rappcats newsletter.
Luminary is the home of The Midnight Miracle, Yasiin Bey and Talib Kweli’s podcast with Dave Chappelle. Kweli has another podcast, called People’s Party With Talib Kweli, on Luminary, too. Listen to a new episode of The Midnight Miracle below.
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