Video: Shabazz Palaces – #CAKE

Posted on the 25 August 2014 by Ifm @ifmdotcom

Expectation is a strange thing. I got so caught up in wanting another Black Up from Shabazz Palaces that it took me weeks to realize that Lese Majesty has everything I didn’t know I wanted from a hip hop record. Creatively and fearlessly, the group navigates their vessel into untraveled and unexpected spaces totally devoid of genre clichés. Still, the choices are not always pretty or logical, and compared to Black Up, Lese Majesty is less words and rhymes and more fascinating sounds that are on a constant collision course with whatever comes next; psychedelic ambient pieces are mixed in with caustic electro beats (like “#CAKE” above) and vintage electro-jazz. It’s hip hop alchemy of highest form, or in the words of Brian Tabb, who wrote a great review of Lese Majesty for Dozens of Donuts, it all sounds ‘endless’. Or at the least irreducible.