About twenty years ago, two artists from Pontiac, Michigan named One Be Lo and Senim Silla joined forces to form the group Binary Star. After releasing their album, Masters of the Universe, they split before releasing a proper follow up. They finally released a new EP in 2013, but Silla soon split after that. However, One Be Lo decided to keep using the name, releasing an album with Decompoze called Water World 3 in 2017. Now, Binary Star has fully transformed from the idea of two artists orbiting each other to the two sides of one artist orbiting each other as One Be Lo works with his production alias OneManArmy. Not only that, but they now release two albums at once to orbit each other, LIGHTY and EARS APART.

The simple explanation to these two albums would be to say that LIGHTY is the fun album, full of clever wordplay and shit talking, and EARS APART is the serious album, discussing social justice issues. Of course, things aren’t that simple, and One Be Lo created this albums to be in conversation with each other, to complement each other, and to orbit each other so that from a distance the line starts to blur between the two albums. From a big picture perspective, it might seem as though One Be Lo is doing everything himself, but that’s far from the case. He’s bringing in live instrumentation, he’s got Autocons co-producing tracks, and we get features from SayWut, DJ King David, Bre Maa, Gwaii, Obed Sucarri, Courtney Wheaton-Peck, Wayman, Jason Berry, DJ Virus, CoCo Buttafli, DMT, Kodac, and RoSpit. This is all to say that the albums have a live, family affair feel to them. Everybody’s on the bus, One Be Lo is just the one driving. The albums can sound grim and sober when they need to, especially when Lo is delving into the hardships he faced when he was younger. The albums can also get soulful and funky, especially when Lo is talking about building towards a better future. It’s not anything that hasn’t been done before, but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to pull off. One Be Lo has been at this a long time, though, and he knows how to switch up his flows and how to layer his lyricism, but he also knows when it’s time to drop everything and just be straightforward and honest with his listeners. It’s all about finding the balance, and that’s exactly what One Be Lo has found with these two albums.

When these two albums were announced and given the short explanation about how they are supposed to orbit each other like a binary star does, I thought it was neat, but I didn’t think about it too hard. I just wanted to get to the music. Now that I’ve spent the time with both albums, I can see how One Be Lo accomplished exactly what he set out to do, giving us two albums that shine a little on their own, but really work best in tandem with each other. That is no easy feat.