#373 Shabazz Palaces - Black Up

From dusted, though 'fork was pitching it too.

I'm not going to beat around the bush: the reason to get on board with this album is the production. Spank Rock is a good point of comparison: the beats are Baltimore-big, with a pulse, surge and buzz at every turn, alternately spare and huge, and sometimes both at once.

But generally, if there's any one influence to point to here, it's dubstep. Wait, wait! Come back! Maybe dubstep's already over, but this album's enough to give you some hope. In fact, think of this as a really experiemental dubstep-influenced electronic album and everything starts to make sense. It just happens to use some pretty decent rapping as a prominent line of focus, melody and rhythm, and it uses hip-hop influence to keep things interesting, letting at least one really nice melodic line tease and surge through each song.

Look at Are you...Can you...Were you, which does its darndest to cling to an icy series of chopped-too-soon samples, but then there's this looming synth, just out of range. And then at 3:17 the undeniable melodic line peeks its head in the door and slithers out, then comes back and leaves again, and again, now with a fat bassline, teasing, teasing, before heading out into the rain. These moments help the songs engage the bobbing part of the head in a way most dubstep won't deign to, and there's a Girltalky intuition manipulating emotion and groove on display here that most dubstep doesn't aspire to.

As an actual rap album? Its a weird one. The rapping is decent, again evoking Spank Rock with its whipsnap drawl. But the production is so aggressive, so different from what you're used to hearing even on experimental rap albums that the actual vocals really feel secondary. This just might be one that requires a bit more time to get used to.

I like it. It's interesting. On the surface, its pretty annoying, but it somehow works on subliminal level, pulling the right deep strings. It's an obvious pairing: sludgy, bassy, chopped electronic music as rap production. But it's done better here than it had to be, with imagination, heart, and craft 4/5

You might like this if: You want to hear some really experimental rap production. You saw promise in dubstep, got bored with it, but retain hope. This is a pretty cool variation.