2011-15 SINGLES
*8*—SHABAZZ PALACES- ARE YOU…CAN YOU..WERE YOU..(FELT)
The voice might remind you of k-os, but it’s Palaceer Lazaro. If that name means nothing to you, you might recognise Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler, a member of 90′s hip-hop group Digable Planets. The other half of this hip-hop vision is Tendai Maraire. As for other musicians who may or may not be involved in this debut album Black It Up— the notes are vague to the point of obscured.
I read some are calling the album the dawning of the New Golden Age of Hip-Hop; I haven’t seen the source declaration and I think it’s far too soon for that sort of crowning, but there’s freshness here, and a deft hand with layers, synths, jazz ideas, world beats, first world politics and the human condition. The band has even gone so far as to make a video summation of the album. Check it.
This song is one of the more hopeful. It starts out conventionally enough, sultry old-school beats and and forms, but then it shifts, electro jazz elements enter, and finally the words become superfluous, the music is enough. Yeah. It’s a feeling.
