Today, July 29th, Sub Pop is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the release of Shabazz Palaces’ Lese Majesty, his acclaimed second album and the follow-up to his label debut Black Up, with a new repress on red and black vinyl.
 
Lese Majesty is a seven-suite, eighteen-track sonic mythmap of new black wave and ghetto psychedelics, featuring singles and official videos for “They Come In Gold,” “Ishmael,” “#CAKE” (directed by Hiro Murai), and “Forerunner Foray” (directed by Chad VanGaalen).
 
Lese Majesty features Shabazz Palaces leader Ishamel Butler alongside Black Constellation collaborators Tendai Maraire, THEESatisfaction’s Catherine Harris-White, Erik Blood and Thadillac. The album was produced by Shabazz Palaces and mixed by Blood at Protect and Exalt Labs in Seattle, Washington.
 
Upon its release, Lese Majesty earned raves from the likes of New York Times, NPR Music, Entertainment Weekly, FLOOD, All Music, and would go on to see placement on “Best of 2014” lists from the likes of Gorilla Vs Bear (“Album of the Year”), Pitchfork, PASTE, SPIN, The Wire, Passion of the Weiss, Stereogum (“Best Rap Albums”), and more.
 
Today, you can also hear two remixes from the Lese Majesty universe, “…down 155th in the MCM Snorkel (OCnotes 40 Acres and All the Grease Flip)” and “Major Winnings (OCnotes Pocket Full of Loaded Dice Remix).”
 
The new repress of Lese Majesty is available now to order from Sub Pop Mega Mart, MM2 (EU/UK) and independent retailers worldwide worldwide. 
 
Shabazz Palaces’ Robed in Rareness and Exotic Birds of  Prey, his companion releases from 2023 and 2024 respectively, are also available worldwide from Sub Pop. 
 
What people said about Shabazz Palaces’ Lese Majesty:
Lese Majesty is Shabazz Palaces getting interstellar, a set of intricate, enigmatic, yet meaningful suites complete with an (initially) impenetrable multidimensional blueprint/map connecting it all in the liner notes. Beneath the visuals, the album contends with a strain of Afrofuturism that puts its faith in finding unities in contradictions and clarity in riddles (“I’m having my cake and I’m eating cake,” “facts stated to enhance what is pre-born,” “we try to unreproduce six tension intervals”), reconciling structure and formlessness, forethought and spontaneity….meter-defying breaks and tactile, synthesized bass-church/musique concrète production that turns human language into primordial elements of cosmic influence. It’s humbling stuff that urges you to dance but knows full well that, to do so, you’ll need to relearn new and better steps [50 Best Albums Of 2014] - Pitchfork
 
“Unlike their previous, also brilliant full-length Black Up, Shabazz Palaces’ new “sonic move” Lese Majesty is not necessarily conducive to absorption in small doses. The record is a massive, dense monolith, divided into suites that only start to make sense after countless repeat listens. It’s a bridge from rap’s beginnings in the early ’70s into its future — structurally, thematically, lyrically, sonically, all of it — that sounds so many light years ahead of everything else in the genre that its nods to the past only reveal themselves after one invests real time immersed in what we called “the impossibly deep, singular astral landscape” that the group has created.” [Album of the Year]  - Gorilla Vs. Bear
 
“With their second album, Seattle hiphop duo Shabazz Palaces unshackled Afrofuturism from cliche in order to present a holistic almost familiar worldview that the future is already here, before demanding an honest response to that revelation. Hua Hsu said:  Abstraction is only useful insofar as it shakes our reliance and this is what makes Lese Majesty’s primal futurism such a bewildering experience. Palaceer raps with secularity and conviction as all that was once solid melts into air - rules and codes vanish, leaving nothing but ghosts while beats dissolve into pretty colors.” [#7 / Albums of the Year] - The Wire 

Shabazz Palaces
Lese Majesty
 
Tracklisting:
1. Dawn in Luxor
2. Forerunner Foray
3. They Come in Gold
4. Solemn Swears
5. Harem Aria
6. Noetic Noiromantics
7. The Ballad of Lt. Maj. Winnings
8. Soundview
9. Ishmael
10. …down 155th in the MCM Snorkel
11. Divine of Form
12. #CAKE
13. Colluding Oligarchs
14. Suspicion of a Shape
15. MindGlitch Keytar TM Theme
16. Motion Sickness
17. New Black Wave
18. Sonic MythMap for the Trip Back