''No Fear of Time'' is the second studio album by American hip hop duo Black Star. Entirely produced by

Madlib Otis Jackson Jr. (born October 24, 1973), known professionally as Madlib, is an American DJ, music producer, multi-instrumentalist, and rapper. He is widely known for his collaborations with MF DOOM (as Madvillain), J Dilla (as Jaylib), ...

, the album marks the duo's first full-length release in 24 years, following 1998's ''

Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Black Star ''Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star'' (often called simply ''Black Star'') is the debut studio album by Black Star, a hip hop duo consisting of emcees Talib Kweli and Mos Def (the latter of whom now goes by Yasiin Bey). The album was released ...

'', and was released on May 3, 2022, via podcasting network Luminary.

Background

In 1998, rappers

Yasiin Bey Yasiin Bey (; born Dante Terrell Smith, December 11, 1973), previously and more commonly known by his stage name Mos Def (), is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, and actor. His hip hop career began in 1994, alongside his siblings in the s ...

(formerly known as Mos Def) and

Talib Kweli Talib Kweli Greene (; born October 3, 1975) is an American rapper. He earned recognition early on through his collaboration with fellow Brooklyn rapper Mos Def in 1997, when they formed the group Black Star. Kweli's musical career continued with ...

formed the duo Black Star, releasing their debut album ''

Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star ''Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star'' (often called simply ''Black Star'') is the debut studio album by Black Star, a hip hop duo consisting of emcees Talib Kweli and Mos Def (the latter of whom now goes by Yasiin Bey). The album was released ...

'' that same year to critical acclaim. Since then, the duo went on to have greater success in their respective solo careers; while also making occasional film soundtrack/compilation appearances including '' The Hurricane'' cut "Little Brother". In 2005, hip hop website TheSituation.co.uk reported Kweli said that a new Black Star album was "in the pipeline". In November 2011, Black Star released two new singles entitled "Fix Up" (produced by

) and "You Already Knew" (produced by Oh No), the latter of which was the lead single for a planned

Aretha Franklin Aretha Louise Franklin ( ; March 25, 1942 – August 16, 2018) was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Referred to as the " Queen of Soul", she has twice been placed ninth in ''Rolling Stone''s "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". With ...

tribute mixtape entitled ''Black Star Aretha''. Eight years later, it was announced that a second album by Black Star was to be produced entirely by

, and was confirmed to be finished in November.

Release and promotion

On April 8, 2022, Black Star officially announced that their highly anticipated second album would be titled ''No Fear of Time'', with a scheduled release of May 3 exclusively on the podcast platform Luminary. It was also revealed in a press release by Talib Kweli that the album was recorded over a span of four years in hotel rooms and backstage at

Dave Chappelle David Khari Webber Chappelle ( ; born August 24, 1973) is an American stand-up comedian and actor. He is best known for his satirical comedy sketch series ''Chappelle's Show'' (2003–2006), which he starred in until quitting in the middle of p ...

's shows. The day after the album's announcement, the duo released a

Black Thought Tariq Luqmaan Trotter (born October 3, 1973), better known as Black Thought, is an American rapper, actor and the lead MC of the Philadelphia-based hip hop group the Roots, which he co-founded with drummer Questlove (Ahmir Thompson). Regarded a ...

-assisted promotional single entitled "Mineral Mountain", which used

's "The New Normal" instrumental from the ''

Sound Ancestors ''Sound Ancestors'' is a studio album by American musician Madlib. It was released on January 29, 2021 via Madlib Invazion. Produced by Madlib, it was arranged, edited and mastered by Four Tet. The album debuted at number 153 on the ''Billboard'' ...

'' album. On November 12, 2022, the duo performed "So Be It" and "The Main Thing is to Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing" on ''

Saturday Night Live ''Saturday Night Live'' (often abbreviated to ''SNL'') is an American late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show created by Lorne Michaels and developed by Dick Ebersol that airs on NBC and Peacock. Michaels currently serves a ...

''.

Critical reception

''No Fear of Time'' was met with positive reviews from critics. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 79, based on five reviews.

Track listing

All lyrics are written by

and

Talib Kweli Greene Talib Kweli Greene (; born October 3, 1975) is an American rapper. He earned recognition early on through his collaboration with fellow Brooklyn rapper Mos Def in 1997, when they formed the group Black Star. Kweli's musical career continued with ...

except where noted. All songs are produced by

. Notes * Tracks 2, 4, 5, 7, and 9 are stylized in

sentence case Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...

. For example, "So Be It" is stylized as "So be it".

References

{{Mos Def 2022 albums Albums produced by Madlib Black Star (group) albums Self-released albums