We are officially less than a month away from receiving not just one, but two brand new albums of music from the Seattle-based hip-hop duo Shabazz Palaces. To build a little buzz, the group has decided to share another piece of new music from one of those records, Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star, a song titled “When Cats Claw.”
Produced by Knife Knights, the song is as cosmically-influenced and sonically spaced out as you’d hope to hear from Shabazz Palaces. There’s tons of reverb, oceans of echo, and a buzzy synth melody holding it all down underneath. On Instagram, the duo advised that, “Next time somebody come around you with that nonsense hit em with a few choice bars from this one.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVlayamg6mO/?taken-by=shabazzpalaces&hl=en
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Ishmael Butler talked about Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star and it’s extra-spatial twin, Quazarz Vs. the Jealous Machines and the themes of addiction to modern mobile devices and social media platforms that run through the latter album. “I just feel like it’s excessive, hella gratuitous and somewhat pornographic the way in which a lot of people do it,” he said. “Why is it cute when a two-year-old knows how to get to that app? And why, when a kid is doing something cool, somebody grabs a phone and physically places it in between these two human beings? This elicits some … corroboration about life? But I’m not on some Grizzly Adams shit. I just wish more people found it weirder.”
Check out “When Cats Claw” above.
