Producer, MC, and overall creative snake-handler, Ishmael Butler has been redefining his career ever since his 1992 hit “Re-birth Of Slick (Cool Like Dat)” as leader of the Digable Planets. He began his Shabazz Palaces collective in 2008, and they will release their second Sub Pop full-length Lese Majesty on July 29.
A reference to the French phrase for sacrilege against royalty, Lese Majesty is an anti-establishment opus with lines of “throwing cocktails at the Führer” and political hip hop themes of race and oppression strewn throughout. The ‘Palaceer Lazaro’ has employed THEESatisfaction’s Catherine Harris-White to produce the silky backdrop to his Butterfly raps, with the result being as accessible as it is assertive.
You can listen to Lese Majesty in it’s entirety over at NPR.
