Hi everyone, Bigthony Sportano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of this new Shabazz Palaces album, It's a Style Sport.

From what I understand, this is technically the eighth full-length album of the underground, psychedelic, left-field, mind-bending hip-hop project known as Shabazz Palaces. And believe it or not, even though it's been a minute since I've done a full-length, formal review of a Shabazz Palaces record, the history, relevance, and uniqueness of its musical footprint is something that has been on my mind lately. Mostly because it's gotten to be so many years since the release of the breakout album Black Up back in 2011.

And not only has that album aged so incredibly well since it was originally released, but still to this day, 15 years later, there's like almost nothing out there that sounds like it. With its hushed rap verses, its multi-phase song structures, it's weird, kinda syrupy bleed between all the sounds. It's off-kilter, funky grooves; it's intergalactic charisma. It's just a really special one-of-a-kind album, even within the context of the Shabazz Palaces discography.

Because the sophomore Shabazz record really failed to live up to the splash of the debut. Personally, I didn't find the songs to be as focused or as cohesive, with a very fragmented track list, but there's still a lot of really unique and intriguing production all over that record. And honestly, the quality of that record dwarfs that of projects which would come later down the line. The Quazarz album, as well as The Don Of Diamond Dreams and Robed in Rareness.

However, since its announcement, I think It's a Style Sport has been shaping up to be something different, maybe a little bit of a reset. Because this here is not a concept album, it's not any kind of, like, double record experience. For the most part, it is a very trim and simply laid out track list of new cuts. Where the main brain of the project, Ishmael Butler, of course, Digable Planets fame, because that's how far back his roots in hip-hop go, seems to be taking some shots in the dark, bringing some new sounds and genres into the Shabazz Palaces recipe. Stuff along the lines of synth-funk and dance music and a little bit of pop, too.

Not that these styles hadn't informed previous Shabazz releases; they most certainly have. But rarely have they been embraced so boldly that it feels like a real genre switch. While, again, still maintaining the dark, shadowy, psychedelic charms that you typically expect from a Shabazz Palaces album.

The whole thing kicks off with "Ahh World (I Won The Alpha Bet)," which I think for long-time fans of Shabazz, this will really kind of ease you into this project because it's very familiar territory. The track is really a psychedelic, tribalist mantra. And in a lot of ways, an attempt at maintaining or bringing back a world that is slipping away from Ishmael Butler's fingers. Talking about how we live in a society of systemized corniness. And greed-fueled zombies in a death cult running everything. The track finishes off with some rules to live by, which I think very clearly lay out a lot of the underlying philosophies to a lot of the observations and critiques that are laid out throughout this album.

The song "Field Notes" is a very dark, eerie piece of jazz rap that, in a lot of ways, does seem to throw it back just a tad to those Digable Planets days. But again, the tone of the production is a lot more grim, which is totally fitting with the lyrics because Butler seems to mostly be telling the story of a hustler's life. But he's really going into a lot of the downsides, the risks, that outweigh the rewards, and really kind of paints this nightmarish vision. It's a testament to Butler's pen that this character portrait comes out so boldly, despite the fact that the instrumental is so awash in effects.

"Show Me Missouri In Mink" is a surprising twist because it goes into more of a straight-up soul direction, but it's kind of a squeaky, trippy, falsetto soul with some pretty prominent glockenspiel melodies. And while the track does build up to some very heavenly peaks, Shabazz Palaces' kind of trademark looseness, off-kilter beats and claps, warped and woozy harmonies, does leave a lot to be desired on the execution front, because it leaves the song feeling a little more sloppy than I think it should be.

And now that I've had more time to sit with it and listen, I think there are similar shortcomings on "Jheri Curl Jump," a track that I really appreciated upon first introduction for just how lovesick and playful and flirty the lyrics are. And while I really do like the tone of this track and several others on this project as well, which are also pretty lovesick, these feelings of love and attraction and lust and flirtatiousness, it really does make for one of the more prominent themes on this album, but there are moments on this track where the muffled vocoder vocals sound like, candy-coated mud. And there are elements in the beat, or the synths, or the vocals that I just wish came through a bit clearer mix-wise or even arrangement-wise.

"Deadstock Dude," though, is a really interesting ode to fashion, however. With some simple earworm refrains, jazzy piano embellishments, and some of the most poetic lyricism on the entire record, you can really hear Butler's reverence for the art of fashion come through on this one. And once again, "Tongue in Chic" is another track where we have a prominent groovy beat, and lots of themes of love, flirting, and meeting someone new.

In fact, this track is all about having a new girlfriend. "New girlfriend" is literally the refrain here, as Butler goes on to describe this person as pretty much being perfect because she likes hanging out with him and the guys, she reads sci-fi, just basically being into a lot of the same nerdy stuff he is, which is totally cool. And I like that he lays it all out with this space-age instrumental that feels like it's lifted from a Prince album. But again, made instead to feel like it's coming from the dark side of the moon.

"Heliocentric Immortality Manifesto H.I.M." is a really awesome electro-flavored cut that sounds like it's straight out of the 80s. Or really that golden age of electro and hip-hop fusion that's long gone at this point, but Butler's bringing it back with a vengeance here. And then after this, we coast down into an outro that I think is quite a bit weaker than the start of this record.

"Olivia, According To Touch," is another pretty, romantic number in the track list. But it's one of a few whose sounds are very stretched out, surreal, and trippy, and maybe kind of pulled and flattened and squeezed to the point where many of them feel almost unrecognizable as an arrangement because again, it does get a little bit too syrupy, a little bit too mushy. The instrumental loses me, even if I'm really appreciating how smitten the lyrics are on this one.

Oddly, "Money Can't Save Your Mind" feels equally gummy, like a very warm bowl of oatmeal. Despite the fact that lyrically this is maybe one of the most biting tracks on the entire record, you may even say, tea spilled on this one. As Butler seems to be taking somebody to task who may have attempted to sue him, who he views as having so little talent with respect to him, who he may have collaborated with in the past, written raps for. But then, from his perspective, they turned around and sort of got on his bad side.

And I feel like this track, in so many ways, is him kind of flushing that relationship completely down the toilet because there's no possible way that whoever he's talking about here hears this song and is like, oh yeah, I'm gonna get back on good terms with that guy. But yeah, for a track that is as biting as it is, the instrumental just feels so flaccid, especially with this blatantly out-of-tune series of vocal lines across this closing bridge that is just very much a mess.

And while I do appreciate the soul direction that Shabazz goes in once again for this kind of dazzling closing track that has a lot of spacey, weird sounds orbiting it, once again, I feel like it's all kind of coming together in such a cluttered and unflattering way. It doesn't really work all that well as an arrangement. I feel like for something of this nature, maybe one or two elements being a little off-kilter or a little out-of-sync or slightly out-of-tune could potentially work just to make it feel a bit weirder, a bit woozier. But with each individual element feeling so out-of-sync, it's just a little bit too far gone. Even if, when I squint my eyes, I can mostly see the vision.

Still, with all of that being said, I do feel like this is the best Shabazz Palaces record we have gotten in quite a while. Really, since the first couple of albums, if I'm being honest. And I hope that means from here we could potentially see a little bit more of an upswing with Ishmael Butler's work, as he's kind of trying out some new directions with style, with sound, and putting out more tracks that seemingly have more of a lyrical focus. Which is why I'm feeling a light-to-decent seven on this one.

Anthony Fantano. Shabazz Palaces. Forever.

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