Shabazz Palaces

Born in Seattle in the late 2000s, Shabazz Palaces brings together rapper-producer Ishmael Butler (from Digable Planets) and multi-instrumentalist Tendai “Baba” Maraire (also active in Chimurenga Renaissance), before the project later centered primarily around Butler. Situated in an experimental American hip‑hop scene, Shabazz Palaces developed an abstract form of rap where electronic pulses and motifs drawn from jazz, funk and certain African musics interweave with fragmented rhythmic constructions. After two self-released EPs in 2009, Shabazz Palaces and Of Light, the duo signed to Sub Pop and issued Black Up in 2011 — an album that established an aesthetic of dense atmospheres, filtered vocals and fractured narratives. Lese Majesty (2014) deepened this approach by playing with sequences of tracks and continuous transitions, while the 2017 diptych Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star and Quazarz vs. The Jealous Machines framed this writing within a science‑fiction and Afro‑futurist imaginary. With The Don of Diamond Dreams (2020), followed by projects Robed in Rareness (2023) and Exotic Birds of Prey (2024), Shabazz Palaces has continued to pursue work that oscillates between rap, spoken word and more electronic sonic explorations, often presented live in club venues, independent festivals and multidisciplinary contexts where the visual component is an important part of the project’s identity.