Black Star

• Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star [Rawkus, 1998] A-
• No Fear of Time [self-released, 2022] B+

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star [Rawkus, 1998]
As "underground" freestylers, they like their beats stark, claiming old school and achieving arty like so many neoclassicists before them. Even saluting Slick Rick (in a tale where the bad kid jacks beats instead of grandmas) or the Funky Four Plus One (and neoclassicist breakdancers), they're never "raw," no matter what they think. On the contrary, they're cooked as hell. Making hard lyrical as they drop "black like the perception of who on welfare" and "you must be history because you keep repeating yourself," they devise a hip hop imaginary where hater players lose their girls-not-bitches to MCs so disinterested they give 'em right back. The rhymes are the selling point. But just because the beats are so understated, the subculture that cares most about those words is what you'll go back to. A-

No Fear of Time [self-released, 2022]
A quarter century on, the first follow-up album by the great lost conscious duo of Talib Kweli and Mos Def/Yasiin Bey is also the first hip-hop album or for that matter popular music of any cultural profile to rhyme "cinema nouveau" with "Daniel Defoe"--a Robinson Crusoe reference on an album designed to show us around "the desert island our planet has become." Absolutely "This ain't a product placement"--their goal isn't to be clever or brilliant. It's to preach truth however corny that may seem, because "The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing," which is that "Life is beautiful even when the world is wack." And who might "My Favorite Band" be? How about "The faithful, the grateful, the tragic, and the classic"? Madlib's settings for their conversational rapping don't always put its philosophizing across as music. But when an unidentified Greg Tate climbs aboard for a few minutes at the very end, he's not even pretending to rap and it sounds like music anyway. B+