Shabazz Palaces is masterminded by vocalist and producer Ishmael Butler and remarkably, this gliding and expansive new offering features his son, the incomparable Lil Tracy. Ishmael flexes his lyrical prowess in a cascading meditation with a snaking bass groove, whilst Tracy delivers his vivid and cinematic diamond flow brilliance.
Speaking on the genesis of “Woke Up In A Dream,” Ishmael explains: “My son hella influences me, and not just musically. He was home visiting, and we were just lounging around, talking shit and smoking weed, etc. Over the course of the night, he would go in and lay stuff down. Between breaks for eating and watching the game, he’d go back in, layering and sculpting and then floating the background ghost vocals. I was trying to play it cool, but I was geeked - when I heard what he did, I was like, “DAMN, this dude is really HIM.”
The single is from Robed in Rareness, a new seven-song mini album, worldwide on October 27th, 2023. Watch the animated visualizer directed by Jacob Kasar.
Robed in Rareness is the first full collection of new material since The Don of Diamond Dreams, their critically acclaimed LP released in 2020.
The album features collaborations with Seattle’s Royce The Choice and Porter Ray, Colorado Springs’ O Finess, Butler’s twin Lavarr the Starr, Bronx’s Geechi Suede (of Camp Lo), and Butler’s son, the aforementioned Lil Tracy.
Robed in Rareness was produced by Shabazz Palaces, mixed by Erik Blood, and engineered by Ishmael Butler and Blood at Studio4 West in Venice, California, with mastering by Warren Defever at Third Man Mastering.
Robed in Rareness’ lead-off single “Binoculars (feat. Royce The Choice)” was released last month, which Pitchfork says “sounds like it’s coming from a gravity-free bunker.” Get lost in the animated visualizer for “Binoculars (feat. Royce The Choice),” also directed by Kasar.
Shabazz Palaces’ first round of touring in support of Robed in Rareness begins with a short run of east coast dates on Wednesday, September 27th, in Kingston, NY at Tubby’s, and now runs through Sunday, October 2nd in Philadelphia, PA at Milkboy. The group will also appear at My Morning Jacket’s One Big Holiday event in Quintana Roo, MX, on April 4th, 2023—additional live dates to be announced soon.
2023 Wed. Sep. 27 - Kingston, NY - Tubby’s Thu. Sep. 28 - Toronto, ON - Great Hall Fri. Sep. 29 - Montreal, QC - Entrepot 77 (Late) Fri. Sep. 29 - Montreal, QC - POP Montreal Festival (Early) Sun. Oct. 01 - Washington, DC - DC9 Mon. Oct. 02 - Philadelphia, PA - Milkboy
2024 Thu. Apr. 04 - Quintana Roo, MX - Hard Rock Hotel Riviera Maya Fri. Aug. 05 - Quintana Roo, MX - Hard Rock Hotel Riviera Maya Sat. Aug. 06 - Quintana Roo, MX - Hard Rock Hotel Riviera Maya Sun. Aug. 07 - Quintana Roo, MX - Hard Rock Hotel Riviera Maya
Shabazz Palaces Robed in Rareness
Tracklisting: 1. Binoculars (feat. Royce The Choice) 2. Woke Up In A Dream (feat. Lil Tracy) 3. P Kicking G (feat. Porter Ray) 4. Cinnamon Bun (feat. Lavarr the Starr) 5. Scarface Mace (feat. O Finess) 6. Gel Bait (feat. Geechi Suede) 7. Hustle Crossers
Sub Pop will release Shabazz Palaces’ Robed In Rareness, a new seven-song effort, worldwide on October 27th, 2023. It is the first full collection of new material since The Don of Diamond Dreams, their critically acclaimed LP released in 2020.
Shabazz Palaces is masterminded by vocalist and producer Ishmael Butler, whose unstinting drive to reimagine hip-hop - even as he enters his fifth decade on Earth - remains undimmed. With Robed In Rareness, there’s a respectful eye on the past, an embrace of an ever-evolving present, and its feet are firmly planted in the future. It features collaborations with the likes of Seattle’s Royce The Choice and Porter Ray, Colorado Springs’ O Finess, Bronx’s Geechi Suede (of Camp Lo), and Butler’s son, the incomparable Lil Tracy.
Robed In Rareness was produced by Shabazz Palaces, mixed by Erik Blood, and engineered by Ishmael Butler and Blood at Studio4 West in Venice, California, with mastering by Warren Defever at Third Man Mastering.
Shabazz Palaces’ first round of touring in support of Robed In Rareness begins with a short run of east coast dates on Wednesday, September 27th, in Kingston, NY at Tubby’s, and runs through Sunday, October 1st, at DC9. The group will also appear at My Morning Jacket’s One Big Holiday event in Quintana Roo, MX, on April 4th, 2023—additional live dates to be announced soon.
2023 Wed. Sep. 27 - Kingston, NY - Tubby’s Thu. Sep. 28 - Toronto, ON - Great Hall Fri. Sep. 29 - Montreal, QC - Entrepot 77 (Late) Fri. Sep. 29 - Montreal, QC - POP Montreal Festival (Early) Sun. Oct. 01 - Washington, DC - DC9
2024 Thu. Apr. 04 - Quintana Roo, MX - Hard Rock Hotel Riviera Maya Fri. Aug. 05 - Quintana Roo, MX - Hard Rock Hotel Riviera Maya Sat. Aug. 06 - Quintana Roo, MX - Hard Rock Hotel Riviera Maya Sun. Aug. 07 - Quintana Roo, MX - Hard Rock Hotel Riviera Maya
The Query: Shabazz Palaces discusses Robed In Rareness with Larry Mizell, Jr.:
“Every time I bless a script it’s a precedent Of the jiggy OGs I’m the President.”
Query: Who, or what, is Robed in Rareness? The new Shabazz Palaces EP, first in a series, something like a SpaceX-Age Hustlers Convention for the time.
It’s been a throuple lifetimes, like 14 scoops, since Earth first perceived the light beams of Shabazz Palaces. A solar fortnight since we witnessed one of the culture’s coldest reinventions to date. The forms may flicker depending on your dimensional positioning: Palaceer Lazaro, Butterfly, “the laser lord light rider Ish Boogie at your service.”
Ishmael Butler. Affirmative.
For the record, Mr. Butler, better than anybody of his generation standing, exemplifies an authentically integrated aesthetic link between the golden era and the now. Actual, lived in, but fresh and unerringly curious. The things rappers clamor for today are things he found at the start of his career, some three decades past, leaving him since free to freak his shit off with zero fear or desire of fitting in…after all, it behooves the hotly pursued to stay cool and lose followers.
And now? Now in 2023, on their eighth go, Shabazz is icier than ever, pushing the limits of style and wit for the hottest days on record. Hydroplaning over molten asphalt on a cloud of arctic vapor, distilling a sparkling vintage too complex for amateur palates, it’s the Palaces. Built by hands divinely guided by practice-honed instinct—for the wonder and inspiration of generations coming behind.
Where’s he at? He’s in his smooth phase; peep the vet maneuvering, as if to answer his younger self’s asking “slow down for what?” Precision and detail, a myth-map meant to elevate those for whom it’s meant. This is auteur rap for an artless era, from a director that’s epitomized slickness over four decades, forever original and unadulterated. That’s what type of time he’s on.
Robed in Rareness pushes the Black Constellation gang line while deepening the ranks and harkening back to the spare, icy menace of those first Shabazz EPs back in 2009. (Note: RIP SILK DOUGIE.)
Clarify: Black Constellation. A collective of active makers and reality shapers pulled into orbit by the gravity of Shabazz’s formation. Check KEXP’s award-winning podcast Fresh off the Spaceship for more family values.
“All I wanna do is see the girls get a chance. All I wanna do is see the bros getting bands”
Community stays a key motif of Ish’s creative endeavors. Over the mini album’s 25 minutes, he holds court alongside a cohort of chosen comrades, whether it’s Town favorites like Royce the Choice or his Stellie Porter Ray, his twin Lavarr the Starr, ice-cold Rockies rep O Finess, or longtime Geechi Suede. He even swings lanes with the one he calls his idol: his only son, the rising superstar Lil Tracy.
“Any n**** fuck w me, he always earn You don’t know by now I’m the Don? You’ll never learn Did you make money for your folks? Or did you burn em’? Gotta MFA in this game, n**** Stay learning.”
Peep the pedigree of a forever-student OG, a 23rd Century Lightnin’ Rod hailing from 23rd Ave E, spitting gold-breaded game with pimpish disdain. Robed in Rareness, the newest brick in the Palace wall.
Let’s get it on.
Shabazz Palaces Robed In Rareness
Tracklisting: 1. Binoculars (feat. Royce The Choice) 2. Woke Up In A Dream (feat. Lil Tracy) 3. P Kicking G (feat. Porter Ray) 4. Cinnamon Bun (feat. Lavarr the Starr) 5. Scarface Mace (feat. O Finess) 6. Gel Bait (feat. Geechi Suede) 7. Hustle Crossers
Shabazz Palaces is announcing new, headlining European tour dates for 2022 which begin March 18th in Brighton, UK at Patterns and currently end on April 30th in Lille, FR at L’Aeronef. Tickets go on sale Friday, October 29th at 10 am (local).
Preceding the European tour in 2021, Shabazz Palaces has a few U.S. shows including October 30th in Austin, TX at Stubbs (with Thundercat), and Saturday, November 6th in Springfield, MO at Outland Ballroom.
Shabazz Palaces is currently working on the follow-up to the internationally acclaimed The Don of Diamond Dreams, which is available now worldwide from Sub Pop. The New Yorker says of the album, “[Shabazz Palaces’] spontaneity and irreverence for rap conventions feel particularly urgent; these experiments are malleable and resistant to form at a time when declarative statements on the current era seem futile. Instead, the group continues bludgeoning musical complacency with songs as equivocal as inkblot tests.” Uncut continues, ”The Don of Diamond Dreams finds Butler’s effects-treated voice rippling through a prism of mutated funk and R&B that feels simultaneously sumptuous and deeply unconventional (8/10).”
Earlier this year, Shabazz Palaces’ self-released the single and official video for “20 Gear Science”, which Stereogum noted for its “spacy, synthy” sound. Even more recently, he celebrated the 10th anniversary of his landmark album Black Up.The AV Club says of the album, “The record still shifts uncomfortably in and out of view, pulses of static coalescing into hooks that vaporize after one incantation.” Meanwhile, Pitchfork offered this, “From great mystery exploded an album of impossible vision.”
Tomorrow, April 30th Sub Pop will release Indian Yard, the debut record from Sitka, Alaska project Ya Tseen. To celebrate the group’s impending release, they have shared an official video for the previously released song “Synthetic Gods,” directed by Stephan Gray. Hinging on verses from Shabazz Palaces and Stas THEE Boss, “Synthetic Gods” is sonically seductive, a tense reflection on crisis that summons the pressure needed to ensure Indigenous sovereignty and power to the people.
Galanin says of the video,” Synthetic Gods is a response to the violence of capitalism dependent on systemic racism and division; and a narration of the pressure that will be applied to destroy it.” You can watch the new video here.
The North American deluxe edition on clear vinyl is now available for preorder. The deluxe packaging will include a 24-page hardcover LP-sized book with covers featuring a sci-fi landscape populated by a toddler-wearing artist Merritt Johnson’s sculpture Mindset, a VR headset woven from sweetgrass. The interior art was designed by Galanin. This deluxe edition will be available while supplies last.
Ya Tseen’s Nicholas Galanin is one of the most vital voices in contemporary art. His work spans sculpture, video, installation, photography, jewelry, and music; advocating for Indigenous sovereignty, racial, social, and environmental justice, for present, and future generations. For Galanin, memory and land are inevitably entwined. His most recent installation for Desert X 2021, on view through May 16, 2021, entitled Never Forget has garnered international media acclaim including from outlets such as The New York Times, TheLos Angeles Times, The Desert Sun, Galerie Magazine, and Time Out. The 45-foot letters of Never Forget reference the Hollywood sign, which initially spelled out HOLLYWOODLAND and was erected to promote a whites-only development. Its timing coincided with a development in Palm Springs that also connected to the film industry: Studio contracts limited actors’ travel, contributing to the city’s rise as a playground and refuge of the stars. Meanwhile, the white settler mythology of America as the land of the free, home of the brave was promoted in the West, and the landscape was cinematized through the same lens. Never Forget asks settler landowners to participate in the work by transferring land titles and management to local Indigenous communities. The work is a call to action and a reminder that land acknowledgments become only performative when they do not explicitly support the land back movement. Not only does the work transmit a shockwave of historical correction, but also promises to do so globally through social media. In connection with this installation, Galanin has organized a Go Fund Me account to benefit the Native American Land Conservancy (NALC.) You can contribute here.
What people are saying about Indian Yard: “a rich listen, strengthened by Galanin’s burning focus on critical issues” - [ 8/10] Uncut
“A widescreen epic of joyous, synth-driven indie-pop, electro-soul and borderless beats. […] An artist who refuses to be hemmed in.” - WePresent
“Indian Yard is every bit as multi-layered and multi-faceted a listen as Galanin’s artistic take on the world promised” - Loud & Quiet
On April 30th, 2021, Sub Pop will release Indian Yard, the debut record from Sitka, Alaska project Ya Tseen. Indian Yard is an intense illumination of feeling and interconnectedness. Following the group’s debut offerings, “Close the Distance”, and “Knives” (feat. John Baldwin Gourley of Portugal. The Man), comes their latest single “Synthetic Gods.” Hinging on verses from Shabazz Palaces and Stas THEE Boss, “Synthetic Gods” is sonically seductive, a tense reflection on crisis that summons the pressure needed to ensure Indigenous sovereignty and power to the people.
Photo Credit: Desert X 2021 installation view of Nicholas Galanin, Never Forget, photo by Lance Geber, courtesy of Desert X.https://www.gofundme.com/f/landback.
Ya Tseen’s Nicholas Galanin is one of the most vital voices in contemporary art. His work spans sculpture, video, installation, photography, jewelry, and music; advocating for Indigenous sovereignty, racial, social, and environmental justice, for present, and future generations. For Galanin, memory and land are inevitably entwined. His most recent installation for Desert X 2021, on view through May 16, 2021, entitled Never Forget has garnered international media acclaim including from outlets such as The New York Times, TheLos Angeles Times, The Desert Sun, Galerie Magazine, and Time Out. The 45-foot letters of Never Forget reference the Hollywood sign, which initially spelled out HOLLYWOODLAND and was erected to promote a whites-only development. Its timing coincided with a development in Palm Springs that also connected to the film industry: Studio contracts limited actors’ travel, contributing to the city’s rise as a playground and refuge of the stars. Meanwhile, the white settler mythology of America as the land of the free, home of the brave was promoted in the West, and the landscape was cinematized through the same lens. Never Forget asks settler landowners to participate in the work by transferring land titles and management to local Indigenous communities. The work is a call to action and a reminder that land acknowledgments become only performative when they do not explicitly support the land back movement. Not only does the work transmit a shockwave of historical correction, but also promises to do so globally through social media. In connection with this installation, Galanin has organized a Go Fund Me account to benefit the Native American Land Conservancy (NALC.) You can contribute here.
The North American deluxe edition on clear vinyl is now available for preorder. The deluxe packaging will include a 24-page hardcover LP-sized book with covers featuring a sci-fi landscape populated by a toddler-wearing artist Merritt Johnson’s sculpture Mindset, a VR headset woven from sweetgrass. The interior art was designed by Galanin. This deluxe edition will be available while supplies last.
Tracklisting: 1. Knives (feat. Portugal. The Man) 2. Light the Torch 3. Born into Rain (feat. rum.gold and tunia) 4. At Tugáni 5. Get Yourself Together 6. Close the Distance 7. We Just Sit and Smile Here in Silence 8. A Feeling Undefined (feat. Nick Hakim and Iska Dhaaf) 9. Synthetic Gods (feat. Shabazz Palaces and Stas THEE Boss) 10. Gently to the Sun (feat. Tay Sean) 11. Back in That Time (feat. Qacung)
The Don of Diamond Dreams is available now, worldwide from Sub Pop.
Shabazz Palaces have delivered an official video for “Bad Bitch Walking (feat. Stas THEE Boss),” a standout from his acclaimed The Don of Diamond Dreams. The visual, which stars Ishmael Butler, Stas THEE Boss, model Shernita Anderson, and dancer-choreographer Tanisha Scott, was filmed in isolation in four cities across North America: Toronto, Seattle, Ontario, and Brooklyn.
Director Amhalise Morgan offers this of the video, “What drew me to this song was how visual the song sounds to me. I reached out to Ishmael and asked if he had a video yet and asked if I could write for it. He wanted me to have “complete autonomy” which was very empowering. The song is simple and sensual so I decided to focus on tight shots to really have the intimacy take center stage and the focus be the women and the performers. We are living in such precarious times and beautiful Black imagery is very necessary and needed. At times it feels like we can’t change the violence in this country nor the victims and the perpetrators but what we CAN do is contribute imagery that is beautiful, strong, yet soft NOT brutalized, marginalized, and disposable. I wanted all those in front of the camera to be timeless and regal so I gave both Ishmael and Stas the direction to wear white. It was also important for me that Shernita and Tanisha, be the personification of beauty that was void of objectification.”
PopMatters says of the video, “A sultry, locomotive shuffle of hip-hop and blue funk, “Bad Bitch Walking” features Butler as a susurrating lover whose languid gaze of a woman is slowly supplanted by the erotic ellipses of female motion. Morgan frames the images through an Afrosensualist eye, which proudly demonstrates the various colors and movements of Black beauty. At times, her camera inverts the male gaze so that Butler is often the desired object in view. “Bad Bitch Walking” also features a rhyme by Stas Thee Boss that further explores the use of the word “bitch” in hip-hop lexicon (see premiere September 2nd, 2020).”
The Don of Diamond Dreams is available worldwide from Sub Pop, and includes the aforementioned “Bad Bitch Walking (ft. Stas THEE Boss),” “Fast Learner (ft. Purple Tape Nate),”“Chocolate Souffle,”“Wet,” features contributions from singer/keyboardist Darrius Willrich, percussionist Carlos Niño, Knife Knights collaborator OCnotes, saxophonist Carlos Overall, and bassist Evan Flory-Barnes.
The Don of Diamond Dreams was recorded throughout 2019 and produced by Shabazz Palaces at Protect and Exalt: A Black Space in Seattle, mixed and engineered by Erik Blood with mixing assistance from Andy Kravitz at Studio 4 Labs in Venice, California, and mastered by Scott Sedillo at Bernie Grundman Mastering in Los Angeles.
[Photo Credit: Patrick O’Brien Smith]
This past weekend, Ishmael Butler hosted BBC World Service’s “Music Life” podcast, an enlightening conversation with guests IAMDDB, KeiyaA, and Bishop Nehru (listen here). And recently, Iggy Pop, on his Friday night BBC 6 Music shows played The Don of Diamond Dreams tracks “Reg Walks By The Looking Glass” (“I love this track,” says Iggy) and “Money Yoga.”
What ‘The People’ are saying about Shabazz Palaces The Don of Diamond Dreams: “[Shabazz Palaces’] spontaneity and irreverence for rap conventions feel particularly urgent; these experiments are malleable and resistant to form at a time when declarative statements on the current era seem futile. Instead, the group continues bludgeoning musical complacency with songs as equivocal as inkblot tests. “This is high art / I tear the form apart,” Butler raps on “Chocolate Souffle.” He engages in a conversation—albeit an ambiguous one—with contemporary hip-hop on “Wet,” and dives headlong into a puddle of free jazz on “Reg Walks by the Looking Glass.” But the surprise is the uncharacteristically concrete “Thanking the Girls”—an ode to Butler’s daughters that unfolds over a static-filled, beautifully off-kilter.” - The New Yorker
“For years now, Shabazz Palaces have oozed a kind of creative wisdom, the type that can only come with age and years of lived experience, but The Don of Diamond Dreams demonstrates a sign of even deeper wisdom: living an entire life of your own, and realizing that there’s still value in learning and listening from the youth.” - Pitchfork
“Through this long journey through different states of consciousness and emotion, Shabazz Palaces continue to serve as the intrepid explorers through the eternal form known as music. The don of diamond dreams and gold stitched jeans continues to shine his light on the path for all of us to follow.” - KEXP
”The Don of Diamond Dreams finds Butler’s effects-treated voice rippling through a prism of mutated funk and R&B that feels simultaneously sumptuous and deeply unconventional.” [8/10] UNCUT
“How many acts release five albums and how many out of that are still as current and relevant as on their debut? Not many. Shabazz Palaces have now joined a rare breed of artists. The Don Of Diamond Dreams is a glorious album that yields more and more with each listen. And listen you need to, because if you don’t you might miss something.” [8/10] - CLASH
“The Don of Diamond Dreams is the most fully realized Shabazz Palaces LP yet—from Butler’s new confidence in his own poetic authority to the way he and multi-instrumentalist Tendai “Baba” Maraire create hip-hop songs that never stop experimenting.” [“Album of the Day”] - Bandcamp
“Through this long journey through different states of consciousness and emotion, Shabazz Palaces continue to serve as the intrepid explorers through the eternal form known as music. The don of diamond dreams and gold stitched jeans continues to shine his light on the path for all of us to follow.” - KEXP
“The Don of Diamond Dreams is a brilliant, buoyant work of provocation and invocation from the rapper-writer-producer. Holy, wise, abstract, and contagious, Don is intergalactic hip-hop that burrows as deep down as it does fly high.” - FLOOD Magazine
”The Don of Diamond Dreams prove Shabazz Palaces to be such a fascinating and exciting project in the age of algorithms and formulae.” [“Album of the Week”] The Guardian
“One of contemporary hip hop’s original outsiders” [★★★★] - Q
“The Don of Diamond Dreams…feels warmer and more optimistic…[It] feels imbued with a sense that alternative realities – different ways of telling stories, different mythologies to reflect our true nature – are always within our reach, if only we’re able to fully embrace our own imaginations.” - The Quietus
“Shabazz Palaces have created another exquisite album” - DJ Mag
“Expanding beyond their already broadened horizons, Shabazz Palaces are seemingly unstoppable.” [8/10] - The Line of Best Fit
“On the 10 track project, the Seattle artists continue to showcase their technologically - intertwined take on the experimental realms of rap and hip-hop, spicing up their Afrofuturist aesthetic with melty basslines, eclectic percussion, psychedelic synth pads, and more.” - Hypebeast
“The 10-track project is another futuristic ride through Butler’s otherworldly mind.” - HipHopDX
“Shabazz are at their best when they channel all their ambition into a more tightly-packed album like this one.” [Notable Releases of the Week] - Brooklyn Vegan
“[Shabazz Palaces] remain immersed in surrealism, but their atmospheric oddity ends up a splendid fit for today’s hip-hop landscape.” - RIFF Magazine
“The Don’s way of pulling you in is to hypnotize you with far-out jazz pageantry and devotion before cutting you loose to wander through the brilliant, idiosyncratic landscapes they created – and they make it look effortless while doing it.” [★★★★] - Spectrum Culture
“Diamond Dreams is immersive and solidifies Shabazz Palaces’ stature as one of the few hip-hop projects to emerge in the 2010s and create a wholly distinctive genre unto itself. Its intergalactic textures don’t resemble earth, but that’s a welcome escape at a historic moment when earth doesn’t feel particularly inhabitable for humans.” [The Don of Diamond Dreams] - PASTE
“[Shabazz Palaces] have managed to continue Butler’s relentless desire to reimagine what hip hop should and could sound like while boldly proving that they’re the heirs to the astral imaginations of Sun Ra, George Clinton, Octavia Butler and Alice Coltrane.” - Joy of Violent Movement
