“Exotic Birds of Prey” – Shabazz Palaces

Album: Exotic Birds of Prey

Artist: Shabazz Palaces

Year: 2024

Genre: Experimental Hip Hop

Grade: B+

The last three Shabazz Palaces releases, including 2024’s Exotic Birds of Prey, have all been seven songs at less than 30 minutes. Likewise, the last three Shabazz Palaces releases (Robed in Rareness and Illusions Ago being the other two) have arrived without much fanfare at all. Nevertheless, the abstract rap project still represents, along with Death Grips, some of the most outré music that modern-day hip hop has to offer. And while Exotic Birds of Prey doesn’t necessarily blaze new trails, it traverses familiar paths. It’s another high dosage shot of trippy, psychedelic, intellectual hip hop, one that goes down quite smoothly and without much difficulty. Open your mind and your pituitary gland will follow.

NOTES & CHORDS

• Ever since the departure of multi-instrumentalist Tendai Maraire, Shabazz Palaces has basically been Ishmael Butler’s (a.k.a. Palaceer Lazaro) solo project. Five of the seven songs on Exotic Birds of Prey feature collaborations with other artists/rappers, but the short runtime helps make the scattershot nature of the album easily digestible. It is trite, but it’s still Shabazz Palaces through and through.

• The last few releases have seen Shabazz Palaces in a comfortable ambient- and funk-oriented groove. The most experimental they get is the noise rock influenced “Well Known Nobody,” which resembles Death Grips in its fast-paced punk rock production, and the retro-futurist grand finale “Take Me to Your Leader,” which features a few interesting beat switch-ups throughout its six-minute runtime.

• Highbrow rap lyric that only Shabazz Palaces can make work: “From the Karakoram mountains of Pakistan with no emotion/Golden sculpture of almighty Japreme Magnetic/Pump the pump shot the gun left you beheaded”

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