Shabazz Palaces

[AVANT-RAP] Something's in the weed up in Seattle. In the past few years, the hip-hop coming out of the Emerald City has gotten increasingly more weird and warped, and spiked pot is the only logical explanation for what morphed Digital Planets jazzbo Ishmael "Butterfly" Butler into Shabazz Palaces' enigmatic abstract gangster, Palaceer Lazaro. On their 2011 debut full-length, Black Up—Sub Pop's first-ever hip-hop release—Butler's surrealistic street rhymes don't so much ride atop Knife Knight's amorphous, minimalist production as fold into it, creating a dreamy listening experience unlike much else in the genre. It's sometimes hard to grasp without certain pharmaceutical enhancements, but considering this performance is part of Reed Arts Week, that shouldn't be much of a problem here.