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Weve been waiting on a second Black Star album since the Clinton administration.
The fact that it exists No Fear of Time, out now is incredible.
They hoped it would build the foundation for their future solo releases.
Kweli, the son of college professors, approached hip-hop as an NYU theater student.
The two Brooklyn rappers became fast friends.
By 1997, theyd started making music together.
Then the duo went a step further, and in 1998 dropped an album.
The recordarrived at a precarious moment in the late 90s, amid difficult discussions about oppression.
They were trying to square a grisly past with a glossy present.
After that, they appeared to go their separate ways.
The duos progressive, pro-Black politics and fiercely independent spirit appealed to a surprisingly wide spectrum of admirers.
As their beloved debut grew smaller in the rearview, Bey and Kweli navigated increasingly different paths.
Bey left the States, taking up residence in South Africa.
Kweli carried the torch, releasing a string of solid collaborative and solo indie albums.
The playing field is different today.
Wokeness has become a boogeyman.
In 2020, he was permanentlysuspendedfrom Twitter for an acrimonious, weeks-long campaign of posts harassing a Black woman.
(The flaws were always present in the music.
Young girls with weak minds, Common snarked onRespiration,but they butts strong.
Conscious rap championed self-expression unless it centered queerness or womens sexual agency.
That was too far out.
That always brought the traditionalist out of these bohemian types.)
It is into this tumult that Black Star returns.
The next day, Black Star began recording music again.
No Fear of Timedelivers the fast-paced wordplay and dizzyingly busy production you might have expected from the pairing.
This makes the two solo songs onNo Fearfeel more cohesive than the seven group songs.
His solo song, Supreme Alchemy, speaks about death, addiction, and incarceration.
The overarching message is disorienting; how can life be beautiful if everything is broken?
They seem like theyre having fun rapping but they also sound like theyre getting lost in the weeds.
On its face, sweetheart.
Whenever it approaches excellence,No Fearalmost rewards the wait almost.
You hope that it doesnt take another quarter-century for these stars to realign.
But as a longtime observer of these two artists, you understand intimately how that happens.
They both have families.
Kweli runs a label.
And, to quote Sweetodd, Beydowhat Beydo.
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