Album Review
Ishamel Butler is back with It’s a Style Sport, the eighth studio album under moniker Shabazz Palaces and follow up to 2017’s Exotic Birds of Prey.
I’ve been a fan of Shabazz Palaces since I heard Shine A Light from Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star in 2017. Since then Buter’s strange space raps have come to occupy a niche space in my music taste, the full length albums can often be quite challenging to sit through, however they normally contain a few great tracks. This music won’t be for everyone, expect abrasive instrumentals and arrhythmic, reverby rapping.
That said, for this album Butler assembled his own, and Digible Planets’ touring bands to jam on his song ideas and help flesh them out. This could be perhaps why a lot of the instrumentals on this release are so interesting and layered.
Ahh World ( I won the Alphabet)
The album begins with Ahh World (I Won the Alphabet), a seemingly semi-autobiographical track about somebody destined for greatness. The track begins with Butler’s vocals pitched down (a familiar staple of Shabazz Palaces music). Instrumentally, the spacey synths seem to dominate the sound. Like most Shabazz Palaces tracks it’s a bit chaotic in places, with vocal textures regularly clashing with eachother.
Field Notes
A cautionary tale about the dangers of living a wreckless life. This time Butler’s vocals have been pitch shifted up. The backing track to this one is jazzy yet sinister sounding with a double bass in the background adding a nice touch.
Show Me Missouri in Mink
Once again, the pitch shifter makes an appearance on Show Me Missouri in Mink. This track doesn’t actually feature any rapping, just singing. I really liked the instrumental on this, with the glockenspiel adding a nice touch along with some very pleasant vocal textures.
The whole thing sounds like a typical R&B song deconstructed and then reassembled back to front. Lyrically, this one is more introspective, looking at the pivotal moments in Butlers life.
Jheri Curl Jump
The pitch shifter takes a well-deserved break for this one. Once again the instrumentation here is really interesting. It starts with a drum loop and vocals before introducing some funky guitars, spooky synths and robotic backing vocals. The outro also features some sweet sounding vocals from a guest singer.
This one starts a bit off-kilter but it all comes together in quite a satisfying way by the end.
Deadstock Dude
Another jazzy one with some very slinky piano and some busy bass. It’s another track that has a lot of clashing vocal, echoey textures at the forefront that seem to add to the overall harmonic foundation of the track.
Tongue in Chic
A bit of a change in pace, Tongue in Chic has quite a slick, 80s sound, punctuated with some distorted guitars. It’s the most “conventional” pop song on the album, you could potentially even dance to this. The track even features a sing-a-long chorus:
New Girfriend, that’s what I need
New Girlfriend, up my sleeve
New Girfriend, up in my mind
New Girlfriend, I should decide
Heliocentric Immortality Manifesto H.I.M
This is another dense one, a bit like an evil/warped club banger. I like the vocals a lot on this one. The drums also have a boom bap flavour with the hi hats and claps.
The last part of this track changes gear completely with everything dropping out and leaving some satellite bleeps and bloops. This is a very welcome palette cleanser after a very busy instrumental.
Olivia According to Touch
One of the weirder tracks on the album (which is saying a lot for an already pretty weird album). This one is really pushing my enjoyment of left-field hip hop to its limits. The song seems pretty structureless without much to ground it to anything.
Money Can’t Save Your Mind
One of the more dramatic cuts, it even features a narrator at the beginning. This track follows on from the weirder vibes of Olivia According to Touch. Everything is very echoey with the pulsing synths and discordant drums almost feeling drowned out.
The ending of this one is a complete other story. For this album, Butler has been pretty on point when including more pleasant sounding outros after the more challenging songs.
From One Future to Another
Finally, we come to the album’s closer, and one of the real highlights of the album. This one appears to use real drums, a noticeable shift after an album full of drum machines. It’s very easy on the ears with some very pleasant vocoded singing and swirling keys in the background. The “I wrote you on a rainy day” outro makes you feel like you’re floating off into space.
There’s a very, uplifting and cinematic quality here, lyrically its also one of the more reflective cuts on the album, the subject matter dealing with how perspectives change as you age. You could imagine this song appearing during the end credits or the final scene of a film, its perfectly placed at the end of the album here.
Final Thoughts
As always with Shabazz Palaces, this was a challenging listen but also an interesting and rewarding one. Although the songs may seem chaotic for the most part, they are also fairly grounded in traditional song structures.
Overall, I was a big fan of the instrumentals on this album, especially the jazzier ones. Of course they are weird and experimental but the album does a very good job of rewarding you with little snatches of accessibility here and there. The songs tend to also eventually find some sort of way of coming together in a very satisfying way.
Like Shabazz Palaces, other releases. The vocals are perhaps the strangest thing about the album. You don’t normally hear vocals used this way in hip hop, being used almost like another instrument. They stutter and clash at a weird pace and do a very good job of unsettling you.
On the flipside, the album does feature some really nice singing, especially on songs like Show Me Missouri In Mink and From One Future to Another, I’d love a whole album of these types of songs.
In summary, I would rank this pretty high up there with Shabazz Palaces best work (Black Up, Lese Majesty)