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A TAV Curator’s Pick.

Black Up is the debut studio album by American hip hop duo Shabazz Palaces, originally released in 2011 by Sub Pop. Shabazz Palaces the experimental hip-hop duo led by Ishmael Butler, aka Palaceer Lazaro (formerly Butterfly of jazz–hip hop group Digable Planets) and multi-instrumentalist Tendai "Baba" Maraire, son of Mbira master Dumisani Maraire.

 “Black Up is the new sonic move from Shabazz Palaces. Like rich velvet hijabs or gold threaded abayas. Luxury as understood by the modest. Shabazz Palaces. If Bedouins herded beats instead of goats and settled in Seattle instead of the Atlas Mountains, this would be their album. Forward thinkers but nostalgic for a sparer time when ancient astronomers only recognized five planets. Hip hop. Black light uses electromagnetic radiation to eradicate microorganisms, but shabazz didn’t come to kill a sound, just to shine their own incandescent lamp on this. Hear. Hard and clear. Fifty thousand years in the making. Honorable.—palaceer pink gators. Produced by Knife Knights.plcrs at Gunbeat Serenade Studio in Outplace Palacelands. It was recorded and mixed in Lixx-alog by Blood.” – Sub Pop

“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.

This enthralling album's first track, "Free Press and Curl", opens with oscillations andrattling handclaps, before a serious worm of a bassline drops. Throughout, Black Up's production is stark and uneasy; tinged with jazz, but coloured principally by the dystopian corners of urban bass music. And once it gets hold of you, it doesn't let go. Every track is lean and muscular, never losing sight of the fact that hip-hop should writhe inexorably forward.

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.” – The Guardian

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