Stream Shabazz Palaces Lese Majesty
Shabazz Palaces, the experimental hip-hop group led by Ishmael Butler, put out the excellent debut album Black Up in 2011, and have been releasing singles lately from their new album, Lese Majesty. If songs like “They Come In Gold,” “#CAKE,” and “Forerunner Foray” seemed even harder to grasp than their already amorphous predecessors, that’s because (as we’ve known from the beginning) this new album is built as a song suite and really needs to be digested in one sitting. Unlike the way Black Up had songs that ended in completely different places and forms than where they begin, Lese Majesty has shorter songs that add up to one swirling, impressionistic whole. Now you can, and should, listen to the entire thing over at NPR, and discuss in the comments here, because this thing requires some discussion.