The 75 Best Songs of 2011
Nostalgia Alert! Jump back a decade and enjoy the best songs of 2011. They are headlined by a synthpop classic, a massive hit from a hot diva, pristine harmonies of a young band headed for greatness.
shabazz palaces
The Best Hip-Hop Albums of 2011
2011 was a year of great diversity, in which rap fans were faced with enough variety to find whatever flavor of hip-hop they wanted.
Shabazz Palaces Bring the Funk on “Bad Bitch Walking” (premiere)
A sultry, locomotive shuffle of hip-hop and hot blue funk, Shabazz Palaces' "Bad Bitch Walking" features Ishmael Butler as a susurrating lover whose languid gaze of a woman is slowly supplanted by the erotic ellipses of female motion.
Hip-Hop Since the Don of Rhyme: Shabazz Palaces’ ‘The Don of Diamond Dreams’
With the release of Shabazz Palaces’ The Don of Diamond Dreams, producer-rapper Ishmael Butler envisions yet another lunar world of sound disturbed by his anxieties and desires.
20 Questions: Ishmael Butler from Shabazz Palaces and Knife Knights
Our 20 Questions feature sums up the quality that Shabazz Palaces' Ishmael Butler only reveals once you get to talking with him: his dry, clipped humor.
Porter’s Head: Rapper Porter Ray on His Latest Hip-Hop Opus, ‘Eye of the Beholder’
Bridging disparate influences like Portishead and Das EFX in his multifarious hip-hop, Porter Ray waxes poetically about the troubles in own his life and in the world around him in this interview.
Sci-Fi Goes Hi-Fi: 10 Artists’ Foray into Hip-Hop Futurism
A host of artists have carved out a niche in the interplanetary margins that now rest in hip-hop culture. Some call it an expansion on Afrofuturist philosophies; others simply a long-time propensity for the science-fiction genre.
Shabazz Palaces – “Since C.A.Y.A.” (Singles Going Steady)
Aggressively experimental, "Since C.A.Y.A." is dissonant and schizophrenic with beats going all over the place and plenty of tasty sonic treats weaving in and out of the track.
Porter Ray: Watercolor
Porter Ray's rapping on Watercolor is relaxed but quick, a style that emphasizes the intellectual bent to many of his rhymes, but intentionally fails to prepare you for the weight of his message.
Shabazz Palaces – “Dawn in Luxor” (Singles Going Steady)
"Luxor" seems like an Afro-futurist ether-world, a place where oppressed populations can congregate and, if necessary, escape to.
Shabazz Palaces Headlines the “Mountain Series” from Pickathon (video) (premiere)
Shabazz Palaces perfectly exemplifies the Pickathon aesthetic as they have greatly expanded hip-hop's palette.
The Forerunner: An Interview with Shabazz Palaces
"It’s just like exploration really, and just jumping off certain types of cliffs and trying to open up sonic parachutes that’ll get you floating down to your destination and landing on two feet."
