The legendary New York City Hip-Hop duo, Black Star, comprised of Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def) and Talib Kweli, has officially announced the end of their 24-year hiatus as a group. The duo is releasing their long-awaited second full length album, No Fear of Time; which comes decades after their critically-acclaimed 1998 self-titled debut.  No Fear of Time is completely produced by the iconic Oxnard, California beatmaker Madlib, who previewed a track from the forthcoming Black Star album during a festival set late last year. 

In a recently-released press release, Talib Kweli gave some background on the making of the duo's new project.

“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.”

“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.”

Are you excited for a brand new Black Star album? Stay tuned for more on this and other Hip-Hop news.