Robed in Rareness

Album review

If you are alive and you love hip-hop, you've undoubtedly been salivating for new music from Shabazz Palaces. While they released five full-lengths and two EPs in their first decade, we haven't heard a peep since 2020's The Don of Diamond Dreams. And we know, there was a plague and a Black Lives Matter movement and some other things happening since then. But who better to pied-piper us out of our lingering malaise than visionary sci-fi head, the rapper Ishmael Butler a.k.a. Palaceer Lazaro (also known as Butterfly when he helped lead jazz-rap pioneers Digable Planets)?

What we have here is another EP, but it's the first of many, so don't sweat the track numbers (7) or total time (25 minutes). Because it's surprisingly sexy and tasty, "something like a SpaceX-Age Hustlers Convention for the time," the often hilarious press release informs. (It's still a bit strange that grunge inventors Sub Pop release their music, but both S.P.s are from Seattle, and in 2023, a lot of folks are surprised that record labels still exist).

The music is often beautiful, mystically-inclined, smooth and flowing, and more ribald than ever. It's up on the down stroke, but nowhere close to light. Lyrically and sonically, it's concerned with staking a claim, with finding one's place in history. (How could it not be when Digable Planets' sounds debuted over 30 years ago, and hip-hop itself is close to claiming Medicare benefits?)

On "Binoculars" guest star Royce the Choice tells the producer to slow down, which is fitting. And the gorgeous "Woke Up In a Dream," featuring Ish's son Lil Tracy, has a downright lugubrious pace, like some chopped and screwed PM Dawn joint. Other collaborations include O Finess, Seattle's Porter Ray, Lavarr the Starr, and Geechi Suede from Camp Lo. The O Finess track, "Scarface Mace," pushes all the right mystical avant-garde buttons. Overall this is perfect in-the-club mix—it's just more about the private room in the back. Funky sex permeates the record. And since this is Shabazz Palaces, it's got transcendental vibes as well. © Mike McGonigal/Qobuz