So corny’s getting cooler Nothing’s gonna stop it if it’s bound to turn a profit For this amount I’ll do it For this I let you watch it But. But it will knock trinkets off your shelves with its sub-bass wobble and titillate those parts that conventional hip-hop doesn't reach.Searching blind Run behind Out of time Into fire Caked up in fake love to get you high This shit is gorgeous It’s bitchin' with your fortunes One hundred medallions in a scout scrimpin' fortress Secret potions voted concealed emotions Grim-tilted-bounce-killing shades for his orbit In a haze And is hoping that they watchin' Before artists he’s droppin' to the fifth and bet he boppin' A little boy coppin' Let the top down Aim straight Climbing in the middle A- Nother statistic for the… Say Jack Let me ask you a question Do you want it? Do you want it? Do you want it? Fast - Do you want it? Like Fast- do you want it? Like How fast - Do you want it? Like How fast - Do you want it? Like How fast - Do you want it? Like How fast - Do you want it? Damn nigga how fast do you want it? The nights are getting stronger and the days are getting longer The buildings getting bigger Outside is getting smaller The lies are getting truer and the truth is getting brighter Things are looking blacker But black is looking whiter The price is getting higher and the buyers is the flyest The stars are never brighter The good up getting tired Yesterday you threw it 'cus you gots to have the new shit And money always fools ya. This album will not destroy all before it. Shabazz Palaces, then, are hardly the hip-hop Nirvana and Black Up is no Nevermind. A few bars in, though, the arrival of an unexpected kalimba line really knocks you sideways. Often, as on " An Echo From the Hosts That Profess Infinitum", Shabazz's works recall the nihilist production that the Neptunes provided for Clipse on their crack-hop opus, Hell Hath No Fury. But Black Up remains a hip-hop record, with Butler's off-the-cuff rhymes ("I run on feelings/Fuck your facts", from "Free Press and Curl") alternating with more abstruse meditations. There are little tendrils here, working their way sideways towards Erykah Badu's magnificently bonkers nu roots music, or the abstracted sound art of Gonjasufi (allegedly Butler's cousin). The allure of this sonically startling outfit only deepens with the knowledge that Shabazz Palaces' main man – Palaceer Lazaro – is really Ishmael "Butterfly" Butler, who once formed a third of Grammy-toting, 90s Daisy Age hip-hop crew Digable Planets.
Every track is lean and muscular, never losing sight of the fact that hip-hop should writhe inexorably forward. And once it gets hold of you, it doesn't let go. Throughout, Black Up's production is stark and uneasy tinged with jazz, but coloured principally by the dystopian corners of urban bass music. This enthralling album's first track, "Free Press and Curl", opens with oscillations andrattling handclaps, before a serious worm of a bassline drops. Rather, Shabazz Palaces were making compelling, left-field hip-hop that had much in common with UK dubstep or the digital soundscapes of Radiohead favourites Flying Lotus. Theirs, clearly, were not the bratty effusions of fellow west coast talking points Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, whose notoriety was building around the same time. Also among their works: the soundtrack for a film about glue sniffing in Kenya. SP had been amassing an intermittent, staticky online buzz, thanks to their cutting-edge sounds, collated into two previous mini-albums. You could easily argue Jensen was still working overtime for the label.īut he nailed the feeling that Shabazz Palaces were something extraordinary. So it's worth noting that Jensen is the former general manager of Sub Pop, crucible of grunge, and that the debut album by Shabazz Palaces, Black Up, is the first ever hip-hop release on Sub Pop. The band in question? A shadowy new hip-hop outfit called Shabazz Palaces.Įven within the realms of pop hyperbole, Jensen's was quite a tweet. The Seattle gig Jensen had witnessed the previous Friday, at a venue called Neumos, was like seeing Nirvana on the cusp of "Smells Like Teen Spirit". "Somebody has to say it: Neumos Friday felt like OK Hotel (April 17, '91) when an Aberdeen trio first dropped a song about teen deodorant."
I n January 2010 a guy called Rich Jensen sent out a cryptic tweet.
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