Shabazz Palaces’ mastermind Ishmael Butler walks and talks as if he’s just had the best sex of his life. His voice, a laidback drawl, exudes radiant cool, and even the slightest movement—a tilt of the head, a handshake—is chill. He has the unparalleled nonchalance of Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, and Lou Reed—people so gifted, they don’t ever need to get in your face about their talents. They vivify the air in any room they occupy, rivet you with their charisma and the casual sagacity of their utterances. Even when Butler murmurs an offhand “yeah,” it’s musical.
Butler won a Grammy Award for Digable Planets’ 1993 smash hit “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)”—but instead doing what other 1990s rappers did, fading away or slipping into irrelevance, Butler has flipped the script on the usual artistic trajectory and created his most adventurous music 20 years on with Shabazz Palaces, which also includes producer Erik Blood and percussionist Tendai Maraire. To date, they’ve released two albums and two EPs, and they are about to issue two more full-lengths.
While Digable contemporaries like De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, and Kool Keith have maintained relatively high quality control over the ensuing decades, they haven’t evolved like Butler has done with Shabazz Palaces.