Madlib

With a long-awaited new album recorded in “hotel rooms and dressing rooms across the globe,” Black Star is back. The oft-discussed duo of Yasiin Bey and Talib Kweli first alerted fans to the impending rollout of No Fear of Time, produced by Madlib, with a formal announcement in April. The follow-up to the 1998 classic Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star is billed as having been completed “guerrilla style” in multiple locations.

It’s finally time. After teasing it a couple of times over the last two years or so, Black Star have officially announced their new album No Fear of Time today. This will be their album in 24 years — Talib Kweli and Mos Def aka Yasiin Bey came out with their debut album Mos Def And Talib Kweli Are Black Star back in 1998. In 2020, Talib said they have a whole new album with Madlib but it may 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,” he said.

Produced by Madlib, with vocals from his Lootpack comrade Wildchild, "Manifestin" is a heart-wrenching examination of racism and police violence. The song opens with a mournful dirge played by a small string ensemble, before the loose, swinging beat kicks in and Wildchild goes to work, his rapidfire flow articulating the horror a Black man feels when faced with any part of the police or justice system.

The “triple lindy” is a physics-defying dive composed of multiple flips completed between several diving boards. Rodney Dangerfield, comically unfit and forever disrespected, “completes” it (with stunt-double assistance and cutaways) in the 1986 comedy Back to School. Unlike Dangerfield, Sndtrak has garnered seemingly ubiquitous respect for his neck-breaking, jaw-dropping flips of familiar samples.

For the last several months, Fly Anakin has been hinting he was building up to a new project with singles including “Sean Price” and “Ghost.” Today he’s back with the official news. Fly Anakin’s official full-length debut is called Frank, and it’s out in March.

Fly Anakin has been steadily been releasing dexterous, vibe-heavy rap projects since 2015, but it was in 2020 that he brought significant attention to his output thanks to collaborations with Pink Siifu. On March 11, the Virginia rapper will share his debut solo album Frank via Lex Records (there's no shortage of solo Fly Anakin projects out there, if you're looking to dive in before then).

Thom Yorke has been doing a series of Radio Hour mixes, curated for Sonos Radio's Sonos Sound System station, and he's shared a new one, his fifth. It's over 90 minutes long and features Actress, Madlib, Aldous Harding, MODESELEKTOR, Tom Waits, Christina Vantzou & JAB, This Heat, and more, and it's available until Wednesday via Sonos Radio. You can also listen on Mixcloud, below.

It's been a busy year for Madlib. He kicked the year off with his Four Tet-assisted solo album Sound Ancestors, he's got a collaborative album with Logic and a "lost" '90s album with Declaime on the way, and he'll be playing some live shows too. He was recently announced for...

Logic has released two new songs, ‘Over You’ and the Madlib collaboration ‘Mafia Music’. The latter song is a MadGic track, and part his ongoing collaboration project with the producer Madlib. Logic alerted fans of its arrival on while livestreaming on Twitch, tweeting “New MadGic in minutes” before releasing it publicly with ‘Over You’.

Last year, Logic retired from music. He explained at the time, “I just wanted to retire because I’m over it man. Not even in a negative way, I’m just over it. I love music and I’m gonna continue to make music on my own. I can’t not just make music. It’s a journal for me. It’s how I express myself. It’s how I heal, but with Logic, I’m stepping away. […] You either believe me or you don’t man. I don’t give a sh*t. I’m over here doing my thing.”

Logic and Madlib have shared a new collaboration called ‘Raddest Dad’, the next taste of a potential album under the moniker MadGic. It’s the second track the pair have released since announcing they had teamed up to work on music together during lockdown. The end of ‘Raddest Dad’ features a...