On the most sun-drenched Friday afternoon in an otherwise soggy Seattle spring, hundreds of curious music lovers are crammed inside Ballard's Sunset Tavern. Dozens more wait patiently outside, hoping someone will leave so they might get in.
Renee McMahon
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SHABAZZ PALACES Neumos, 925 E. Pike St., 709-9442, neumos.com. $15. 21 and over. 8 p.m. Thurs., June 30Fri., July 1.
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Inside, among the din of clanking glasses and idle chatter, a sundress-clad woman in her early 20s nudges her friend and says "I think that's him," motioning to a man standing near the tavern's tiny stage.
Like everyone else inside the bar, the woman is waiting to see Shabazz Palaces and its enigmatic frontman, Ishmael Butler. But the man she just pointed out is not Butler. In fact she, like most of her fellow concertgoers, probably wouldn't know Butler if he were standing two feet in front of her.
That's fine with Butler, because he'd rather you not know him.
As chief architect of the city's most hysterically lauded hip-hop project, Butler has made it his business to stay in the shadows, aggressively avoiding the press and eschewing the now-commonplace idea that artists need to be shameless hucksters of their own brand in order to succeed.
He's been called a genius, the future of hip-hop, and the greatest rapper alive, and despite his nearly two decades in the music business, much of that praise has come in just the past two years, on the strength of two anonymously released Shabazz Palaces EPs, a handful of performances, and even fewer interviews.
Now, with the June 28 release of his first proper Shabazz album, Black Up, on Sub Pop, Butler is teetering on the precipice of what could be the Grammy winner's full-blown return to the spotlight. In honor of the occasion, he is ever-so-slightly parting the curtains and giving us a fleeting peek at his life.
If you're one of the chosen people allowed an audience with him, you quickly run into the first problem with meeting Butler: What do you call him? He is Ishmael, a 42-year-old father, Central District inhabitant, and former Garfield High School basketball star. He is Butterfly, one-third of Digable Planets, the Grammy-winning rulers of early-'90s backpack rap. He is Cherrywine, maker of avant-garde funk-rap.
His current nom de guerre is Palaceer Lazaro, a man often shrouded in mystery. It is as Palaceer that Butler has charged back into cultural relevance by crafting some of the most otherworldly, jarring, head-bobbing new music to echo out of the Emerald City in years.
Inside a Capitol Hill coffee shop on a typically damp spring afternoon, Butler slumps into an uncomfortable wooden chair, looking slightly bewildered and about 15 years younger than he actually is. Despite being downright geriatric in the disposable-hero world of hip-hop, the dusting of grey in Butler's goatee is the only thing keeping him from getting carded these days.
Onstage he's all swagger, bobbing and weaving to the beat like a prizefighter. But in person, Butler is soft-spoken and deliberate. He makes little eye contact and has an easy smile that he's quick to unleash when talking about things he enjoys, such as traveling, the feel of performing, and his musical love for labelmates Helio Sequence and Fleet Foxes.
When addressing topics that don't interest him, which can be rounded up to include the past, the future, and most things associated with his creative process, the smile disappears and Butler stares out the window, longing to be anywhere but here. He contemplates the distasteful questions for what seems like an eternity, searching for just the right way to tell you that he won't tell you anything.
And it's not only questions about his art that Butler takes a pass on. Even simple questions, like who's in Shabazz Palaces, will get you little more than a blank look. (The most noticeable and constant Shabazz Palaces collaborator is multi-instrumentalist and fellow Central District resident Tendai Maraire, who declined to take part in this story.)
Despite taking deliberate steps to keep his name and likeness as far away from Shabazz Palaces as possible, Butler insists he's not trying to be cagey or mysterious. As far as he's concerned, he's simply striving to make the best music he can, and everything else is the product of a bored and lazy media.
"Everybody needs content nowadays," Butler says of the much-played-up mystery angle. "A lot of it is manufactured, and I knew that. There was a lot of misinterpretation, but that kind of thing runs rampant nowadays. It's not about mystery."
Butler's quick to disown his role in creating the enigmatic persona that has earned him so much mileage in the music press, but in truth he's directly responsible for shaping it. In early interviews with both local and national media, Butler asked writers not to mention his legal name or reference his former band, and some obliged him.
And in what has to be his most bizarre tic, Butler has made it his mission to keep his photograph off anything related to Shabazz Palaces, including his own websites, album covers, and flyers advertising his show. Not only did he refuse Seattle Weekly's request for a photo shoot, until last week he was one of the few acts in Sub Pop's vast stable without a promotional picture on the website.
