What to do New Year’s Eve? How about spending it with Shabazz Palaces?! Wednesday, December 31, STG presents A Black Constellation & Shabazz Palaces NYE at the Neptune. Doors will open at 8 and the show will begin at 9 with OC Notes and Porter Ray opening and Shabazz Palaces as headliners.
Why is this the perfect way to spend your New Year’s? For starters, it’s a 21+ show and the Neptune serves drinks so heeyyyy!!! (isn’t that the whole point of New Years anyway?) Secondly, Shabazz Palaces is an amazing group on quite a few levels. Shabazz Palaces is a duo made up of Ishmael Butler (formerly of Digable Planet) and Tendai Maraine, both repping Seattle as home. Shabazz was the first hip-hop group signed to Sub Pop in 2010 and in July of this year they released their second album Lese Majestry. Shabazz beautifully combines futuristic, highly experimental beats with loaded politically and socially conscious lyrics. Shabazz Palaces makes it clear that hip-hop is and should always remain a vestige of Black art and neglects neither element of that sentiment. That hip-hop in its roots is a vehicle for political awakening and not merely a form of entertainment as it is often deluded to (Igloo Australia). Their identity as artists transcends into the larger collective of Black Constellation, a group of like-minded innovators of music, art, fashion and the meeting grounds of the medium.
Shabbazz’s most recent Constellation collabs include being featured on THEESatisfaction’s single “Recognition” released earlier this month and appearing on the Indigenous Futurism mixtape that also features Constellation alum Silver Jackson as well some notable names like Erykah Badu and A Tribe Called Red. Shabbazz Palaces is currently building a lot of momentum and their sound seems to be infiltrating and influencing mainstream music (Childish Gambino’s Kauai EP sounds a lot like the same deconstructed futurism of Shabbazz). Get with the Constellation or get left behind, ring in the New Year with the new future of Shabbazz Palaces and the Black Constellation.
Tickets are available here: http://www.stgpresents.org/tickets/by-month/eventdetail/1774/-/shabazz-palaces
Megan Castillo / Feminist Killjoy / KXSU Reporter