It's been more than two years since Brother Ali released a full length album. So anticipation is high for his next project, "Mourning in America and Dreaming in Color." Here are some new details. First, Ali released a new song this week to tide fans over until the album is released. It's called "Writer's Block" and is produced by Jake One, the acclaimed Seattle producer who is handling all production duties on the album (no Ant this time). The drum-heavy song is, as you might expect, amazing:

Also, Ali recently talked with the website HipHopDX about the past year. During the interview he revealed that some interesting collaborations are in the works. Chiefly, his new album might feature renowned philosopher/theologian/academic superstar Cornel West. Here's what Ali told HipHopDX:

"… I'm a real big follower of Dr. Cornel West. I really love and admire him so much. I've always wanted him to be a part of the music that I'm doing. I wanted to show it to him and I didn't know if he knew who I was. Through a couple of mutual friends, I reached out to him, tried really hard and I just got to his assistants. He has two assistants, one when he's on the road and one when he's at Princeton. The one at Princeton said, 'Send me an e-mail.' I thought that was just like, 'Yeah.' She told me he gets hundreds of requests like this all the time and he's just busy. So, I poured my heart out in this email and figured I'd give it one last shot. And the next morning, he called me. He said, 'Yeah, I know about you. Me and Lupe Fiasco were just talking about you. I know about 'Uncle Sam Goddamn.' I know about all the stuff that you're doing. I would love to be on your album and I would love to hear what you're doing and I would love to support you, and introduce you to people. But, I'm extremely busy.' I said, 'Doc, I'll go wherever you are. Wherever you are, I'm on the next plane if you could give me a half hour.' He said, 'Can you be in Princeton tomorrow?' So, I stayed up all night, found a flight, flew out to Jersey and went to Princeton. We ended up hanging out from 2 in the afternoon until 10-11 at night. I played him a lot of my stuff, recorded some of the conversation, he recorded some stuff for me. Yeah, we just hung out and it was really beautiful, man, really, really great. To be putting the finishing touches on this album and to be able to show it to him, it just really gave me this…He's one of the people that when you're around him, whatever's great about you, he finds it right away and he spotlights it and makes you feel like a million bucks."

Read the full interview here (scroll down, it starts near the bottom of the page).

(Above photo by Jerry Holt)