Shabazz Palaces' Ishmael Butler: 'Starry is a way I can kind of describe myself'

Butler, one half of duo, tells the Guardian about new album Lese Majesty, gutting an old brewery and his favorite kind of #cake

In 1994, Ishmael Butler – then of funk-hop trio Digable Planets – proclaimed, “We beat to rap what key beat to lock” in their smash single “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat). It’s 2014, and Butler’s contemporary musical group, Shabazz Palaces, shout an extension of that – this time from the rooftops – on their latest album, Lese Majesty: “To be us it takes leaps of faith.”

Butler’s path to musical acclaim has been far from linear; the Seattle-based musician forgoes the prestige for the homegrown, keeps a private life away from the stylized glamour that hip-hop can provoke. But whereas Digable Planets grooved on lickety-split rhymes, funk breakdowns and jazzy outros, Shabazz Palaces traverse paths more mystical – space-age synthesizers, sultry R&B and pummeling noise thrashes all interweave masterfully on their latest Sub Pop imprint Lese Majesty.

The duo’s 2011 Black Up swooned critics and audiences alike, waxing poetic on identity and black consciousness. Latest Lese Majesty dips its toes into stranger sonic waters, leading the listener through a gripping path through the cosmos, colluding oligarchs, and #cake, a stinging commentary on social media-ification of the world at large. The record is styled like a series of suites, listening like a triumphant hip hopera instead of a record.

Ish Butler spoke to Paula Mejia about gutting an old brewery to build a studio for Lese Majesty, feeling forever starry and his favorite kind of #cake.

PM: There all these dualities of agitation and calm, sorrow and joy I hear in Lese Majesty. What kind of headspace were you in writing these songs?

IB: I’m remembering this as I’m telling you now. The physical space in which the album was recorded was unique and special to us, because we found a raw space inside of an old brewery. We basically renovated it into four rooms and made a studio out of the place. So we built the studio then went in there and recorded [Lese Majesty]. And so it looks and feels very much like we wanted it to: black walls, black carpet, dim lights, it’s big, it’s airy, you can get reverb just from certain rooms, you can switch stuff around, like you can put your amp in different places. It’s a very designated and designed creative space. We could stay there until three, four in the morning. Whenever.

That was the main thing that kind of dictated our headspace, and that would be confidence, freedom, and also the tools, if you will, to achieve not only the shit that was in your head that you were thinking but also shit you could never imagine. The combinations of micing and amplification and different rooms and transcendence of the mind, the night and weather conditions, those things put us in a very ethereal headspace.

A lot of people will ask: “Oh people liked Black Up, did you feel the pressure to do this or that?” Not really, because what I feel was essential about Black Up was that instinct prevailed in that one, and this one we had instinct but also confidence in our own life, too. It was just strength, really.

PM: I read that you recorded an hour more than what made the final cut. How does it feel listening to it now? Are you surprised, wish you could have done something different on it, feel great about it?

IB: All of that. All of it.

PM: I’m interested in this idea you’ve mentioned about Lese Majesty being a sonic attack on social media and “me-mania.” Do you think there’s hope for our culture yet?

IB: Always. I do. I mean … I feel like a lot of people’s take on this thing is dark and dismal and hopeless. But I see the current state of things as a reality that can be modified. It’s not like we’re going to go back to some other golden time when things weren’t this way. We gotta deal with things as they are.

Social media is real and it’s not going anywhere. It might change a little bit but it’s going to be as it is, so I just think it’s cool when things that would be considered underground or marginal are also understood as being viable. Essential things, things that are cool – ideas, executions, I hope that we can bring some of those things to the forefront. I don’t think it’s hopeless now. It was the subject of our music, but in the end, going in, making music, singing, rapping, making moves, is a hopeful endeavor.

PM: The notion of navigating the cosmos is frequent subject matter in your music. Do you have a favorite constellation?

IB: [Chuckles] No, I don’t. I’m not even really that interstellarly, I don’t have that much knowledge about it. I’ve just always felt … disembodied, if you will, and stellar. I’ve always been keen to this notion, man: I am the present and tangible, but that’s only a percentage, a section of my being. I always felt starry. Starry is a way I can kind of describe myself. I always feel like I’m channeling some other place, ancient and futuristic at the same time.

PM: Sure. Speaking of stars, I wanted to ask you about your collective Black Consellation.

IB: Yeah. As with most of the stuff that we’ve been doing, Shabazz Palaces, THEEsatisfaction, all of my relationships with Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes, OCnotes and Khalil Joseph, it all happened very serendipitously and organically. We never sat down and said, “Hey this is what we’re going to be called, this is our manifesto, this is what we’re going to do.” It was always in action and some other result sort of solidified what had been coined. Even the coining of it wasn’t by us, but other people who observed us. That guy did the video, they did the clothes, they did the artwork.

It’s really a constellation that found us in the night sky. We had a similar outlook and a similar shine. It’s held together more so by what we do instead of what we say or come up. It’s a given; if we make music, we know we want Nep [Sidhu] to do the artwork, or Maikoiyo to do the set design or video. It’s people that are cool and talented and we’ve all kind of helped each other proliferate our similar ideologies.

PM: Is that partially what’s kept you in Seattle?

IB: You know, I’m not really sure. I describe it how you feel about your family – you stay with them regardless of whoever else you might meet and know because it’s your family. I don’t really think about it anymore. Sometimes I want to be someplace else for this reason or that reason, I might touch down in Berlin or Paris or New York or something and think, man. If I lived here … but there’s something about Seattle that calls me back and makes me comfortable. It’s a mystical place. Rainy, there’s a lot of trees, who knows how old these mountains and freshwater lakes and sounds and oceans are. There’s a spiritual hold here that’s strong for me, brings me back and makes me want to stay.

PM: The positivity you’re implementing into hip-hop is quite unique, given that hip-hop is about confidence, yes, but also bashes others down while building its own identity. How do you see hip-hop as it’s unfolding right now?

IB: I’m sort of…getting away from getting away to subscribing to the categorization of music. But I guess to that, our endeavor is this a reflection of that. It’s kind of moving in a way that’s totally iconoclastic, so we’re not even really thinking about how most people think of approaching music, with how you classify it, how do you market it, how do you sell it, how do you perform it, how do you dress it? Everything, those considerations, we know them, we’re old enough now to understand them and have a certain amount of experience with them, we’re trying to deconstruct it and almost trying to forget about it? Not even fucking with thinking about it at all.

PM: Sometimes music gets wrapped up in the business element of it.

IB: I think marketing and packaging is cool and fun, but it should be as unique as each person who’s doing it. Stuff shouldn’t be as uniform as it is, but I get it. People are trying to sell it through certain channels that are already set up. We see this is another chance to do something fresh and put another idea into the forefront. If it’s a visual or video artist, we think, yeah, let’s do that. Keeping the conversation moving instead of standing upon “tradition.”

PM: What was your first concert?

IB: A Stevie Wonder concert in a park. I don’t remember where or how old I was, but I remember just sitting on the grass and hearing like “Superstition” and that kind of stuff. We were kind of far away, I was with my mom and dad, smoking weed…I wasn’t smoking weed, but they were. It was cool. I used to live in Philly, and there used to be this performance venue called Dell’s, and a Dell East and a Dell East and another one up north, and it used to have crazy events. The Delfonics and kinds of singing groups would come up there, and I remember going up with my dad out there and that stuff.

PM: Have you listened to anything lately that’s stunned you?

IB: I’ve been listening to this Somalian guy named Ahmed Naji, and I found out about him through my Somalian brothers I’ve been hanging with. I am always fascinated with Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, especially things like Before Today. I really dig those, phenomenal. Panda Bear, from Animal Collective, their sonic approach is pretty incredible to me. I listen to the radio and this guy Santana and his crew play a lot of beat-oriented R&B. It’s pretty fresh.

PM: I have to ask: what’s your favorite type of #CAKE?

IB: My favorite type of #CAKE? I gotta say, it varies, but anytime you come up with a red velvet I’ll reach for it. But coconut’s good, chocolate’s good. I know my way around a #CAKE.

Contributor

Paula Mejia

The GuardianTramp

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