Shabazz Palaces: It’s A Style Sport (CD)

With bravado and precision, ever-evolving musician, producer, and rapper Ishmael Butler returns as Shabazz Palaces with It’s a Style Sport. It’s a Style Sport stays true to Shabazz Palaces' form in its daring show of experimental hip-hop and free-form poetry, while revealing a more reflective and upfront side of the Seattle musician. It’s a Style Sport finds Butler compiling what he’s learned from his storied career into a playful, shimmering portal, again proving himself an artist of chameleonic ambition, fueled by curiosity, courage, and a limitless imagination.

The album is the product of a collaborative, communal effort with many of Butler’s touring band members: Evan Flory-Barnes on upright and electric bass; Thaddeus Turner on guitar, keyboards, and vocals; Kassa Overall on drums; Gerald Turner on bass and vocals; Marquetta Miller on vocals; and Carlos Overall on saxophone. Butler’s longtime friend and collaborator Erik Blood provided instrumentation, production, and mixing.

On It’s a Style Sport, a visage of Butler’s past lives as a rapper and performer is flung up against his contemporary persona, taunting and illuminating. At its core, It’s a Style Sport is an ode to the rap game of years past, when the playfully competitive ambition drove the genre to always outdo, outrun, and out-finesse your peers.

1. Ahh World (I Won the Alpha Bet)
2. Field Notes
3. Show Me Missouri in Mink
4. Jheri Curl Jump
5. Deadstock Dude
6. Tongue in Chic
7. Heliocentric Immortality Manifesto H.I.M.
8. Olivia According to Touch
9. Money Can't Save Your Mind
10. From One Future to Another