It’s been 24 years since Black Star, the duo of Talib Kweli and the man now known as Yasiin Bey, released their landmark debut album Mos Def And Talib Kweli Are Black Star. Since then, both Bey and Kweli have gone on to huge careers, and there’s always been talk of the two of them getting together for another album. In fact, years ago, both rappers mentioned that they’d gotten together to make a new album with Madlib. But there have been obstacles.

In 2020, Talib Kweli said that Black Star had recorded a whole album with Madlib but that it would never come out: “People who never made a beat, never wrote a rhyme in they life got they fingers in the pie and are being disrespectful to what me and my brothers built. It’s in Gods hands now. I’m on to other things, life is too short to be disrespected by culture vultures. Maybe y’all will get to hear this album after I’m gone.” But now, it’s happening. The second Black Star album is called No Fear Of Time, and it’s coming out next month.

There’s a catch, though. To hear No Fear Of Time, you’ll have to sign up for the podcast app Luminary; the LP will be an exclusive to Luminary users. Bey and Kweli worked with Luminary on the Dave Chappelle podcast The Midnight Miracle last year, and they even debuted a new Black Star song on Chappelle’s show. Talking about the new album in a press release, Kweli had this to say:

About three to 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. 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…

This is very similar to how we did the first album. 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.

Here’s the trailer for the album, which features a brief 15 seconds of new music:

No Fear Of Time is out 5/3 on Luminary.