Hip-hop's version of Timon and Pumbaa.
Shabazz Palaces - Black Up (2011) – 8.2 / 10.0
Label: Sub Pop Records
The above score doesn’t indicate as much, but Black Up is one of my favorite albums of the year. In a column that can be found elsewhere on the interwebz, I said that Black Up is my second-favorite album of the first six months of 2011, and even as I write this review, I find myself nodding along to most of the music. That said, I have no qualms about the score I’ve given this album. It’s called “being objective”.
Black Up is mostly an experiment in subverting rap tropes, and your appreciation for this album will depend on how willing you are to submit to its terms. I’ve been leaned on cLOUDDEAD and Why?, so of course I would appreciate a weird beast like Black Up. I’ve played Black Up for many of my friends, and none of them liked it outside of obvious highlights “Recollections of the Wrath” and “Swerve the Reeping of All that is Worthwhile (Noir Not Withstanding)”. I’m the first guy to disregard the opinions of others in favor of my own reasoning, but they had a point—it’s more of an interesting album than it is a great one.
Not that it isn’t a great album, too—I still think the way Shabazz Palaces (whoever they are) mutated the phrase “one love” into something unrecognizable and unsettling on “An Echo from the Hosts that Profess Infinitum” is still genius, “Youlogy” was my jam for a long time, and “Recollections” and “Swerve” are two of the best songs of the year. It’s just that I think this album is less Hamlet and more Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead—certainly good in its own right, but it is a side diversion from a better main course.
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