If you aren’t looking in the cracks and corners, it would be easy to give up on hip hop. In the mainstream, the genre is deep in its ‘poodle rock’ phase – acts are bloated, aggrandising, appreciable at a strictly ironic level. In other words, rap is in the same place rock was in the late ‘80s when Guns N’ Roses were the biggest band on the planet. Decades hence, erudite swagologists will probably look back on Watch The Throne, Kanye ‘n’ Jigga’s bling odyssey, as some sort of nadir, a paean to the joys of Maybachs tricked with shark tanks, released at the lowest ebb of the biggest economic calamity since the recession. We are, in other words, awaiting hip hop’s answer to Nirvana.
In 2010, Richard Jensen, a former executive at Seattle’s Sub Pop records, tweeted that he has stumbled upon exactly that. At a dingy local venue, he’d happened upon Shabazz Palaces, the new project from Ishmael Butler, late of ‘90s alt. rap crew Digable Planets. Smitten on the spot, Jensen tweeted something to the effect that he’d seen the new Nirvana, and just heard them play their very own ‘Teen Spirit’.
Two years on, Shabazz Palaces haven’t quite exploded all over the pop landscape – instead the new face of hip hop is the jokey, gimmicky Odd Future – but, as a capacity Twisted Pepper attests, word is getting out. Shadowy, and hulking, the duo hold themselves absolutely still, aside from the occasional bobbing or weaving of a head. Their beats, however, are absolutely seismic.
On ‘Gunbeat Falls’, a skittering piano line gives way to police siren rhythms and droning keyboards, over which the duo swap deeply enigmatic lyrics. The intensity is further ratcheted up on ‘Youlogy’, with its industrial-hiss groove, and a jarring stop-start tempo. “The nights are getting stronger and the days getting longer,” rhymes Butler. “The buildings getting bigger, outside is getting smaller.” What he’s on about we have no idea – but it sounds a million times more profound than the bling ‘n’ bitches vernacular embraced by more famous peers. In a small way, it’s hard not to suspect that tonight you’re witnessing the first stirrings of a revolution.