Book Shabazz Palaces

Shabazz Palaces is the Seattle hip-hop project of Ishmael Butler, who performs as Palaceer Lazaro and first gained fame as Butterfly of the jazz rap group Digable Planets. For much of its run, Butler worked alongside Tendai "Baba" Maraire, a multi-instrumentalist whose father was the mbira master Dumisani Maraire. After two anonymous self-released EPs in 2009, Shabazz Palaces and Of Light, they became Sub Pop's first hip-hop signing. The 2011 debut album Black Up drew wide critical acclaim and later made Pitchfork's 200 best albums of the 2010s. Lese Majesty (2014) debuted with a premiere at the Pacific Science Center's Laser Dome in Seattle, and in 2017 the group issued two albums on the same day, Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star and Quazarz vs. The Jealous Machines, paired with a short film and a comic book. The catalog continued with The Don of Diamond Dreams (2020), Robed in Rareness (2023), Exotic Birds of Prey (2024) and It’s a Style Sport (2026), and their track "Shine a Light" (2020) joined the online soundtrack of Grand Theft Auto V. Their shows are immersive and hypnotic, pairing live percussion with experimental beats.