@Neuromancer the brehs made it an exclusive to the app that Dave has his podcast at. No physical releases neither smhpeople still looking for this?
Black Star: No Fear of Time /// NEW ALBUM 5.3.22
- Thread starter Aquarius Snake
- Start date
Appreciate you my G.
Buy the cd here No Fear Of Time | Black Star
Is this bootleg ? They seem to be selling some very "rare" stuff...
Rhyme 4 Rhyme
Pro
Finally got through this. Not much to go back to. Not really any of their faults. Just not much here. Mos & Talib should've let Lib handle the whole direction and theme of the album. Just feels like a mix of songs and not like either of the Gibbs albums or Madvillainy, which this could have been.
yeah shyt is mid
The album’s title No Fear of Time is seemingly a declaration of the two artists’ mantra going into its creation. With 24 years between the original Black Star and its sequel, the time between each release plays a central role in the album. The title suggests that this time between records, this 24 years, is not something to be feared. The actual music stands for itself, and it doesn’t matter how long it took. The passing of two decades between releases did not hinder the process of the album’s creation, but most likely aided it into the final product it is today. Therefore, the listener should not fear time, but simply take in the everlasting truth of the music. The album art is this image, the cover to a photography book on the Kanaval of Haiti, depicting two Haitian boys in carnival dress. The image is edited to place these two figures in a mystical cosmos, with a space of light and stars at their back. This final cover places the culture of Haiti and diaspora in this space setting, engaging with an Afro-futurist formulation of black culture. In the 21st century, the rapper’s choose to set their Black Star line in the heights of space, displaying the evolution and expansion of Marcus Garvey’s vision into Afro-Futurism.
The album opens on the ambient intro to ‘o.G.’, a sparse setting with soon erupts into drum rolls and the voices of yasiin and Talib. A bumping bass traverses these drum fills, as dub yells sound over Madlib’s beat. yasiin’s verse comes into this mix, teeming with spiritualism, Biggie quotes (“Shilahlah, live from Bedford Stuyvesant, the livest one”) and closing with the triumphant words “The light is not afraid of the dark at all, that part, Black Star”. yasiin then also sings the song’s hook, “I want to thank you for helping me reach the understanding, / the time is relative and the truth is everlasting”, words that appear to be this album’s primary message, linking to its title and appearing multiple times throughout. This primary message is a call to free oneself from a preoccupation with time and it’s passing, and to focus on the more everlasting elements of life and truth rather than the material. The song briefly cuts out before moving into Talib’s verse, which just as intense a declaration, making threats to fascists (“We gon' bash us some fascists and **** them up”) and celebrating the self (“My birthday is a holiday, mark it down on your calendars”). The song then closes on the wisdom of yasiin’s hook.
The second song, ‘So be it’, opens on a the Madlib flip of a looping fuzzed bass sample, a driving beat that brings energy to the verses over it. yasiin’s verse is a skilful display of rapping style and technique, using rhymes, assonance and alliteration to move from one colourful image to another in quick succession. The verse shows no sign of slowing even when Madlib’s sample seemingly run outs beneath it, as bey just keeps rapping. The emcee proclaims “It's bigger than hip-hop, hypes, and wicked government”, another testament to the everlasting nature of rhymes that transcend. Style comes to the forefront in lines such as the surreal imagery of “Van-glorious, phantasmagoria, / Crack-panned Oreo on each and every all of you” or “Bey, torpedo, blast match the ego / Sniper on the range, sniper bang enough, reload / RPG to give free power people”, where freedom is violently claimed with a multitude of weapons. This then leads straight into Talib’s verse, with the duo even continuing the rhyme scheme as if the entire track is just one continuous slew of bars. His raps lead the listener through the months of the year in an explicit attention to the passing of time, such as May’s “Black Star sequel”, “November when we come for that office, black POTUS” or “Colder than the winter wind, day after December 10” which expertly repurposes a multisyllabic Mos Def line from 1998. This again highlights the celebration of time passing, not the fear of it. The song then closes on bey’s singing, as the first break from pure rapping in the entire song comes almost 4 minutes in.
The album opens on the ambient intro to ‘o.G.’, a sparse setting with soon erupts into drum rolls and the voices of yasiin and Talib. A bumping bass traverses these drum fills, as dub yells sound over Madlib’s beat. yasiin’s verse comes into this mix, teeming with spiritualism, Biggie quotes (“Shilahlah, live from Bedford Stuyvesant, the livest one”) and closing with the triumphant words “The light is not afraid of the dark at all, that part, Black Star”. yasiin then also sings the song’s hook, “I want to thank you for helping me reach the understanding, / the time is relative and the truth is everlasting”, words that appear to be this album’s primary message, linking to its title and appearing multiple times throughout. This primary message is a call to free oneself from a preoccupation with time and it’s passing, and to focus on the more everlasting elements of life and truth rather than the material. The song briefly cuts out before moving into Talib’s verse, which just as intense a declaration, making threats to fascists (“We gon' bash us some fascists and **** them up”) and celebrating the self (“My birthday is a holiday, mark it down on your calendars”). The song then closes on the wisdom of yasiin’s hook.
The second song, ‘So be it’, opens on a the Madlib flip of a looping fuzzed bass sample, a driving beat that brings energy to the verses over it. yasiin’s verse is a skilful display of rapping style and technique, using rhymes, assonance and alliteration to move from one colourful image to another in quick succession. The verse shows no sign of slowing even when Madlib’s sample seemingly run outs beneath it, as bey just keeps rapping. The emcee proclaims “It's bigger than hip-hop, hypes, and wicked government”, another testament to the everlasting nature of rhymes that transcend. Style comes to the forefront in lines such as the surreal imagery of “Van-glorious, phantasmagoria, / Crack-panned Oreo on each and every all of you” or “Bey, torpedo, blast match the ego / Sniper on the range, sniper bang enough, reload / RPG to give free power people”, where freedom is violently claimed with a multitude of weapons. This then leads straight into Talib’s verse, with the duo even continuing the rhyme scheme as if the entire track is just one continuous slew of bars. His raps lead the listener through the months of the year in an explicit attention to the passing of time, such as May’s “Black Star sequel”, “November when we come for that office, black POTUS” or “Colder than the winter wind, day after December 10” which expertly repurposes a multisyllabic Mos Def line from 1998. This again highlights the celebration of time passing, not the fear of it. The song then closes on bey’s singing, as the first break from pure rapping in the entire song comes almost 4 minutes in.
At the forefront of ‘Sweetheart. Sweethard. Sweetodd.’ is Madlib’s chopped up soul sample, as vocals, chords and bass cut in and out in an imperfect but soulful loop. Kweli comes first here, with the standout line “This the Black Star line like Marcus, the cargo / Is all the stardust that we spark up”, which calls upon the Afro-futurist Pan-Africanism and the carrying of Marcus Garvey’s torch in the two emcees, as their album carries the cosmic cargo of “stardust”. yasiin’s verse follows, a ret-telling of a conversation on the nature of love. He recounts, “One said, I’m too noble for simple love, / Said the other, have you ever been noble enough?” where two voices debate the nobility of a simple love. This is followed by the line “But never mind, clever fool, I love you still”, where even the simple love between the two voices allows them to come together despite their disagreement. The height of the track comes in yasiin’s own soulful singing out to a “Sweetheart”,which echoes several times and closes the song.
The next track,‘My favourite band’ is a solo showing by bey, and begins with another of Madlib’s soulful loops and the sounding of bird whistles. The verse is a powerful one, as yasiin is a preoccupied with the spiritual and the metaphysical nature of things. He opens rapping “This is for my favourite band of human beings / The faithful, the graceful, the tragic and the classic”, addressing his words to all who listen, in any position of life, with any degree of faith, grace, or tragedy. The verse continues, “The evidence of things unseen, the book of life / The mansions of the moon, the bones of Fir’awn”, a reference to body of the pharaoh Rameses II who persecuted Moses and the children of Israel. According to Islamic scripture, these bones would be preserved and displayed as a message to future generations, a message throughout time to all human beings. Later in the verse yasiin also raps “My Umi told it to me just the other day […] I hope you get what you want / And that you want what you need”, a reference to his classic song ‘Umi Says’, as well as the more recent ‘NAW’ from his 2016 album. This line imparts the wisdom of his ‘Umi’, meaning mother in Arabic, which expresses the vision of needs and wants coalescing together, without any tendency for the inequality of a society based on wants alone. For yasiin, the two should come together, so that everyone gets what they need both physically and spiritually, and this should leave them satisfied and happy in life.
After another spacey ambient section, the opening, eerie piano line begins the track ‘The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing’ or ‘TMT’ for short. The recurring monotone utterance of “TMT — f**** white supremacy” is muttered by both rappers throughout the song, a powerful mantra which aligns with the eeriness of the instrumental. yasiin’s verse engages with the album’s title in lines such as “Local time, all ages / Forever is the current event / Life on this side is quick, quick”, where the everlasting ‘forever’ is what he is preoccupied with, not the quickness of life but any existence in the other side. His verse also closes with a shoutout to J Dilla, who’s tragic passing places him in this space of the ‘forever’. Talib’s verse is an answer to yasiin posing the question “What is white supremacy?”, to which labels it “Mental illness”, an irrational state of mind. He continues on these lines later in the verse with “Don't believe you superior to the darker races / Just means you inferior living darker places”, where racism and white supremacy is described as a dark, pitiable state of mind.
The album’s following track is ‘Yonders’, where gunshots open Kweli’s verse as he raps “Shots fired / You say your block is like The Wire, I am not inspired”. These lines suggest the rapper’s boredom of both the actual violence and the glorified portrayals of it in America, where the rapper’s attention is markedly turned the material problems of the African American community. bey alternatively opens his verse with a date, ‘January 32nd’, painting the surreal image of an inaccessible time beyond time, chasing after a more spiritual approach. The same verse closes with an explanation of the song’s title, “Way out way raw, way warm, way cold / Yonders”, as it seems the two emcees a directing their raps to the similarly way out space of ‘yonders’, a place defined by its being beyond them.
The album then moves into its solo Kweli showing in the next track, ‘Supreme alchemy’. Here Madlib’s beat is a jazzy loop of cymbals, hi hats and piano chords, a relaxed backdrop over which Talib rhymes. He opens describing the soundtrack of Black Star’s creative process, stating “At the crib, we listen to Madlib, / Hi-Tek, Dilla beat tapes and that's it”, which paints the image of a scene where these three producers beats collide and transform alongside the emcees to create the Black Star sound. Later in the verse he represents the pride in his blackness through the line “Descendant of a king, I got Negus in my bloodline” using the reclaiming Ethiopian term for a king, as well as proclaiming the joy of freedom from the music industry and how he can “Celebrate escaping from the industry to get away / Seen the same kind of fate that turned Dumile to Metal Face”, which describes its exploitative ways through the story of how one rapper became the masked villain MF DOOM just to spite this industry. The jazzy beat from DOOM’s own Madvillainy collaborator then rides out into the next track.
The next song is ‘Freequency’, where a misspelling places the additional word ‘Free’ to the meaning of the title. Black Thought’s verse is the first to shine, a raw onslaught of rhymes full of mythical allusions (“Descend into darkness like black Orpheus”), self-comparisons to black poets (“an American gangster slash Langston Hughes”), and his final lines “If you tryna go the distance, liberate your mind / Your soul gon' follow, it ain't far behind / As long as you're not hollow, it ain't hard to find / I personally transcend space all the time”. Thought connects his verse to the the floating word ‘Free’ which hovers over the track and fastens to its title, proclaiming a freedom of mind and soul to be achieved. All this is atop a beat of triumphant horn stabs and ocean crashes which Madlib creates. Kweli and yasiin follow with their own verses, following similar themes of liberation. yasiin sings the outro of “Waves all over the place”, placing this imagery as the song’s culmination. The image may call upon the sea and the waves which carried slave ships, as even in the modern age the waves offer a glimpse of the violence which occurred upon them. As well as this however, the waves emphasise a contrast, that of open spaces, beyond spaces, where freedom can be attained and an identity can be carved out. Overall, the duality of such an image echoes out the album’s penultimate moment.
The final song on the album is its title track, ‘No fear of time’. Madlib laces the track with stabbing dub bass and reversed drums, as the track echoes out the album’s culminating message. Kweli’s verse is an attack on the thought processes of racism such as “They said a wound create capital but that was rape” and “they assume that racism is logical”. A short refrain then bridges the verses together, where bey sings amidst wistful horns. His verse then begins with the esoteric imagery; “A message from the ancient future, a fresh fossil / A piece of the buried gospel that the Earth refused to swallow / A seed grown into a tall tree” - full of contradictions, symbolism and the metaphysical description of an all-encompassing message. He laters raps about how “Black Star reconvened” so long after their debut, a focus of this song, ending his verse on the creation of a new Black Star project where “God give us the design and we assemble an ark and just float”. The song and ultimately the album then ends on the same chorus which opened the record; “I want to thank you for helping me reach the understanding”, this time sung by Yummy Bingham. A speech by Greg Tate overlays this closing, detailing the strengths of rap music and what hip hop offers to the world. The album therefore closes on the message it conveyed from its very opening, the greatness of hip hop and a proclamation that the listener should not fear the passing of time, as the albums, emcees and landmarks of the music will be cemented within that passing time, not lost to it.
The next track,‘My favourite band’ is a solo showing by bey, and begins with another of Madlib’s soulful loops and the sounding of bird whistles. The verse is a powerful one, as yasiin is a preoccupied with the spiritual and the metaphysical nature of things. He opens rapping “This is for my favourite band of human beings / The faithful, the graceful, the tragic and the classic”, addressing his words to all who listen, in any position of life, with any degree of faith, grace, or tragedy. The verse continues, “The evidence of things unseen, the book of life / The mansions of the moon, the bones of Fir’awn”, a reference to body of the pharaoh Rameses II who persecuted Moses and the children of Israel. According to Islamic scripture, these bones would be preserved and displayed as a message to future generations, a message throughout time to all human beings. Later in the verse yasiin also raps “My Umi told it to me just the other day […] I hope you get what you want / And that you want what you need”, a reference to his classic song ‘Umi Says’, as well as the more recent ‘NAW’ from his 2016 album. This line imparts the wisdom of his ‘Umi’, meaning mother in Arabic, which expresses the vision of needs and wants coalescing together, without any tendency for the inequality of a society based on wants alone. For yasiin, the two should come together, so that everyone gets what they need both physically and spiritually, and this should leave them satisfied and happy in life.
After another spacey ambient section, the opening, eerie piano line begins the track ‘The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing’ or ‘TMT’ for short. The recurring monotone utterance of “TMT — f**** white supremacy” is muttered by both rappers throughout the song, a powerful mantra which aligns with the eeriness of the instrumental. yasiin’s verse engages with the album’s title in lines such as “Local time, all ages / Forever is the current event / Life on this side is quick, quick”, where the everlasting ‘forever’ is what he is preoccupied with, not the quickness of life but any existence in the other side. His verse also closes with a shoutout to J Dilla, who’s tragic passing places him in this space of the ‘forever’. Talib’s verse is an answer to yasiin posing the question “What is white supremacy?”, to which labels it “Mental illness”, an irrational state of mind. He continues on these lines later in the verse with “Don't believe you superior to the darker races / Just means you inferior living darker places”, where racism and white supremacy is described as a dark, pitiable state of mind.
The album’s following track is ‘Yonders’, where gunshots open Kweli’s verse as he raps “Shots fired / You say your block is like The Wire, I am not inspired”. These lines suggest the rapper’s boredom of both the actual violence and the glorified portrayals of it in America, where the rapper’s attention is markedly turned the material problems of the African American community. bey alternatively opens his verse with a date, ‘January 32nd’, painting the surreal image of an inaccessible time beyond time, chasing after a more spiritual approach. The same verse closes with an explanation of the song’s title, “Way out way raw, way warm, way cold / Yonders”, as it seems the two emcees a directing their raps to the similarly way out space of ‘yonders’, a place defined by its being beyond them.
The album then moves into its solo Kweli showing in the next track, ‘Supreme alchemy’. Here Madlib’s beat is a jazzy loop of cymbals, hi hats and piano chords, a relaxed backdrop over which Talib rhymes. He opens describing the soundtrack of Black Star’s creative process, stating “At the crib, we listen to Madlib, / Hi-Tek, Dilla beat tapes and that's it”, which paints the image of a scene where these three producers beats collide and transform alongside the emcees to create the Black Star sound. Later in the verse he represents the pride in his blackness through the line “Descendant of a king, I got Negus in my bloodline” using the reclaiming Ethiopian term for a king, as well as proclaiming the joy of freedom from the music industry and how he can “Celebrate escaping from the industry to get away / Seen the same kind of fate that turned Dumile to Metal Face”, which describes its exploitative ways through the story of how one rapper became the masked villain MF DOOM just to spite this industry. The jazzy beat from DOOM’s own Madvillainy collaborator then rides out into the next track.
The next song is ‘Freequency’, where a misspelling places the additional word ‘Free’ to the meaning of the title. Black Thought’s verse is the first to shine, a raw onslaught of rhymes full of mythical allusions (“Descend into darkness like black Orpheus”), self-comparisons to black poets (“an American gangster slash Langston Hughes”), and his final lines “If you tryna go the distance, liberate your mind / Your soul gon' follow, it ain't far behind / As long as you're not hollow, it ain't hard to find / I personally transcend space all the time”. Thought connects his verse to the the floating word ‘Free’ which hovers over the track and fastens to its title, proclaiming a freedom of mind and soul to be achieved. All this is atop a beat of triumphant horn stabs and ocean crashes which Madlib creates. Kweli and yasiin follow with their own verses, following similar themes of liberation. yasiin sings the outro of “Waves all over the place”, placing this imagery as the song’s culmination. The image may call upon the sea and the waves which carried slave ships, as even in the modern age the waves offer a glimpse of the violence which occurred upon them. As well as this however, the waves emphasise a contrast, that of open spaces, beyond spaces, where freedom can be attained and an identity can be carved out. Overall, the duality of such an image echoes out the album’s penultimate moment.
The final song on the album is its title track, ‘No fear of time’. Madlib laces the track with stabbing dub bass and reversed drums, as the track echoes out the album’s culminating message. Kweli’s verse is an attack on the thought processes of racism such as “They said a wound create capital but that was rape” and “they assume that racism is logical”. A short refrain then bridges the verses together, where bey sings amidst wistful horns. His verse then begins with the esoteric imagery; “A message from the ancient future, a fresh fossil / A piece of the buried gospel that the Earth refused to swallow / A seed grown into a tall tree” - full of contradictions, symbolism and the metaphysical description of an all-encompassing message. He laters raps about how “Black Star reconvened” so long after their debut, a focus of this song, ending his verse on the creation of a new Black Star project where “God give us the design and we assemble an ark and just float”. The song and ultimately the album then ends on the same chorus which opened the record; “I want to thank you for helping me reach the understanding”, this time sung by Yummy Bingham. A speech by Greg Tate overlays this closing, detailing the strengths of rap music and what hip hop offers to the world. The album therefore closes on the message it conveyed from its very opening, the greatness of hip hop and a proclamation that the listener should not fear the passing of time, as the albums, emcees and landmarks of the music will be cemented within that passing time, not lost to it.
Ukbrotha
Superstar
So they still didn't realise a CD of this?