Shabazz Palaces – “It's a Style Sport” review: Afrofuturism with self-mockery
Ishmael Butler delivers the eighth Shabazz Palaces album, recorded in eight days with longtime collaborators. Pitchfork gives it 7.6, Metacritic sits at 79.
Photo: Joe Mabel / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Single video: YouTube · Shabazz Palaces · youtube.com
Single: Ahh World (I Won The Alpha Bet)
Ishmael Butler, co-founder of Digable Planets, has long been one of US hip-hop's most idiosyncratic minds with Shabazz Palaces. “It's a Style Sport”, released on 23 October via Sub Pop, is the project's eighth album and the follow-up to “Exotic Birds of Prey” (2024). According to the label it was recorded over eight days at Seattle's Hall of Justice Studios with players, some of whom have worked with Butler for years – among them drummer Kassa Overall, saxophonist Carlos Overall and bassist Evan Flory-Barnes. Butler co-produced with Erik Blood.
The ten songs range from the opener “Ahh World (I Won The Alpha Bet)” and “Jheri Curl Jump” to “Tongue In Chic”, a new wave R&B song in which Butler reflects on his dating life with humour. Pitchfork says the album “delivers plenty of that signature haze, but it plants one foot on solid ground”. Slant Magazine highlights how much fun Butler seems to have making fun of himself.
It is not without caveats: Uncut feels the jams “meander into stoned whimsey at times”, while Glide finds the tracklist inconsistent but praises its imagination. The result is a Metascore of 79 – an album that grounds Butler's Afrofuturism without betraying it.