Watch: Black Star Makes Triumphant Returns With New Album and Song, “o.G.”
Black Star is back and sounding better than ever. The long-awaited comeback might have taken 24 years, but according to the Brooklyn-cemented duo, there is no fear of time. Which, coincidentally, is the name of their new album, No Fear of Time, entirely produced by Madlib.
A follow-up to their 1998 classic, Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Black Star, bey and Kweli have decided to make the album only available on the Luminary podcast network and to whet people’s appetites they have shared the lyric video for the album’s opening track, “o.G.,” which you can listen to below.
Last year, Black Star discussed the album with their good friend Dave Chappelle.
“About three-four 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 [like],” 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.”
Kweli added: “This is very similar to how we did the first album. But on the first album, there were no mobile studios. During 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.”
“What you will continue to get out of us is a sincere expression,” bey added. “It’s who we really are, what we’re really responding to, and what’s really important to us.”
Interested listeners and hip hop fans can listen to the album in full via the Luminary app.
