It’s turning into quite an eventful year for hip-hop if you’re of the persuasion that shit sounded better when samples were king and the beats went boom, bap, boom-boom, bap. Must be that generational thing again when those born twenty years ago are discovering that the sound of their babyhood is, well, pretty good. And those who were making it back then are only too happy to oblige again now, it seems. Crawling out of the woodwork this year have been LL Cool J with his Q-Tip produced The FORCE LP and Diamond D with his Diam Piece 3 LP – both of which were better than anyone had a right to expect. Meanwhile, DOOM’s MM Food LP has just had a twentieth anniversary re-release and the monkey has also caught wind of a forthcoming new The High & Mighty LP in ’25. Hip-hop y’all! Certainly up there with the best of the new material by hip-hop veterans currently is Black Star’s second LP, entitled No Fear Of Time. And it’s probably just as well the pair have no fear of time since they last released an album as Black Star – their debut, Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star – in – er – 1998. Which was so long ago, it was at least a decade before Def began going by Yasiin Bey as an artist – and he’s been going by that name for thirteen years!
In truth, No Fear Of Time has had a limited online existence for the last two years but ’24 is the first time it has had a physical release on vinyl and cd. Produced solely by Madlib (in contrast to its predecessor on which Hi-Tek, Da Beatminerz, J Rawls, 88 Keys, Ge-ology, Shawn J. Period and Kweli himself all took a turn behind the knobs), No Fear Of Time is somewhat shorter (9 tracks to the first LP’s 13). It was also first officially released in 2022 though this year marks its first physical release on vinyl (and cd) from Rhymesayers. However don’t let its relative brevity put you off. Nor the fact that it was recorded ‘guerrilla-style around the globe in hotels and in dressing rooms at Dave Chappelle’s shows over the course of four years.’ This is dope and the dopest of the tracks is So Be It with a video composed of live footage. If you didn’t catch this in online, it’s time to put things to rights.
(Out now on Rhymesayers)