BLACK STAR / Black Star Three-Definition

Damn near ten years ago in June 2002 an album appeared: Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star. Most hip hop heads whom I know rank it pretty high in the constellation of all time absolutely no contest best of hip hop EVER. Even old heads like me were not only impressed many of us actually liked the album.

Anticipation was high for the follow up. We waited.

And we waited.

And waited. And are still waiting. Even though the pressure to put out a second album must have been immense and mounting every day, even though both have done beautiful work since, even though there have been the occasional concert and one or two recent collaborations, even though both fans and foes are begging for more—even though all of the above, there has been no second Black Star album.

A return is promised but Haley’s Comet done been here and gone, and as the semi-sacrilegious joke goes: Jesus Christ going to return before the duo drops another album; hell, Obama might even get re-elected and still there would be no new Black Star album. Some of us have faith and some of us have given up hope.

DJ Lt. Dan got tired of waiting. Back in February of 2010 he took matters into his own hands. From bits and pieces, a little of this, a smidgen of that, some hot beats and bootlegged tapes, and a touch of inspired mixing and mashing-up, my man Dan done crafted a Black Star album.

Yeah, it’s a bootleg. Yeah, it’s a free Mixtape. Yeah it really is Mos Def and Talib Kweli working together. Yeah, although unofficial, we really do have a (sort of) new release from Black Star.

Now, it’s like a week after the holidays and Big Mama being Big Mama done come up with some remixes of holiday left-overs that got you going “yum-yum!”

Listen below and decide for yourself whether it’s real or a Memorex mash-up.

BTW, if you are interested you can go here for a free download.

—Kalamu ya Salaam

       

This entry was posted on Monday, January 2nd, 2012 at 12:55 am and is filed under Contemporary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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