All Aboard the Shabazz Palaces Spaceship

The Seattle-based hip-hop group's new mini-album Robed in Rareness continues its trek into the future.

by Jas Keimig

Music fans have been bombarded with so much recently. Whether it's fake Drake tracks composed by artificial intelligence or two-minute TikTok viral mashups of Baby Keem and Mazzy Star, music production and consumption seem to be on a hyper-highway of profit and frivolousness. That's why it is a huge relief that Seattle-based Ishmael Butler's music project Shabazz Palaces is dropping a new record steeped in its iconic brand of flagrant wisdom, charting a course through the future that feels authentic, embodied, and fly as hell.

Today, Robed in Rareness is officially released as the group's eighth record. Produced by the Central District's very own Butler and mixed by known Shabazz associate Erik Blood, the seven-track mini-album is a woozy, collab-heavy production, finding them charting a different edge of the galaxy. Robed in Rareness is the first project in a series of releases Butler has been ideating for some time, dipping heavily into his producer bag and linking up with other talented folks.

"The cohesiveness [around this project] would be me as the producer, the conceptual spearhead of all of it," said Butler in a recent Zoom interview. "It's a lot of features, collaborations, and different approaches stylistically. So it's taken from the Shabazz universe and put into a series of releases, in which I am the through line."

As one point in the Black Constellation artist collective, Shabazz's community connections run deep. Highlighted on KEXP's excellent (and award-winning!) podcast on the subject, Butler serves as a grounding foundation for the collective, pulling from experience in hip-hop trio Digable Planets and his longtime association with Seattle. That fact is highlighted by how stacked the crew is on Robed in Rareness, which comes out swinging.

Album opener "Binoculars" features Royce The Choice, Butler's close friend, and sounds like it takes place underwater, with juicy, trippy textures and high-level lyrical finesse from both emcees. On "P Kicking G," Butler teams up with fellow Black Constellation member Porter Ray for an eerie, synth-driven track filled to the brim with boasts and bravado. Butler takes the back seat while Ray drives the main thrust of the song, dropping lines like "I'm calm but I'm anxious/ Smooth but I'm dangerous/ We all in the matrix."

Throughout the record, Butler is an enigmatic presence, often melding his flow with that of his co-conspirators in a way that you can't delineate one from the other. Like on "Cinnamon Bun," it's hard to tell exactly where Butler ends and his "twin" Lavarr the Star begins on the murky, percussive track. Notably, Robed in Rareness also includes Butler's son and rapper Lil Tracy, who pops up on the glittery "Woke Up in a Dream." Butler calls Tracy his "idol," adding that he learns just as much from his children as they learn from him.

"[Lil Tracy] made his bones in the music industry. He's very known and popular and he says cool stuff, he's got a good life and I like his friends, you know what I'm saying?" Butler said. "I want to be like that too, so it works, it's real."

Robed in Rareness brings together a combination of both old and new facets of Shabazz's history. The album cover, in fact, is one of the first photos the band ever released to the press, featuring Butler posted up with two giant pythons on gold leashes. The reason? It's hella cool, obviously. "I've never seen a promo picture for no music colder than that picture," said Butler. "I like how it represents the music and me."

Since its inception, Shabazz Palaces has always been considered a part of the avant-garde of electronic music and hip-hop, pushing the boundaries of time and space, rhythm and rhyme. Steeped in the language and imagery of Afrofuturism, the group's music sounds like it's from the future, with tricky time signatures and lyrics exploring outer space or the idea of computers taking over. In many ways, Shabazz has presaged the specter of A.I. looming over the music industry. Does anything about artificial intelligence seem appealing — or haunting?

"I don't fuck with A.I. A.I. is whack. You're simulating something that already exists and has existed — although not perfect — for time immemorial," said Butler. "The whole notion that it's humanity without mistakes — what the fuck you talking about? First of all, the notion of mistakes or things not being perfect, that's the essence of humanity, because inside of non-perfection, there's all kinds of experience of things that have quality and meaning."

And there's tons of quality and meaning in Robed in Rareness. As an emcee who's seen hip-hop transform and mutate and evolve over the past three decades, this record positions him firmly on the frontier looking for the next exit, the next out to another dimension. On the wavy album closer "Hustle Crossers," Butler asks some unseen power to "take me away from here." "Did everything I touch get in the way of what I'm reaching for?" he asks on the track. Regardless of the answer, we're along for the ride.

📸 Featured Image: Shabazz Palaces' latest release is a collab-heavy endeavor, surging the group to new heights. (Photo courtesy of Sub Pop Records.)