''Black Up'' is the debut studio album by American
hip hop duo
Shabazz Palaces. It was released on June 28, 2011 in the United States on
Sub Pop
Sub Pop is a record label founded in 1986 by Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman. Sub Pop achieved fame in the early 1990s for signing Seattle bands such as Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Mudhoney, central players in the grunge movement. They are often ...
. The album was produced by Knife Knights at Gunbeat Serenade Studio in Outplace Palacelands."
Reception
Critical reception
''Black Up'' received widespread critical acclaim; many commented on the experimental song structures and intricate lyricism. Review aggregator
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
gave the album a normalised rating of 83 out of 100, based on reviews from 36 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
Metacritic included ''Black Up'' in its "Midyear Report: The Best Music of 2011 So Far."
In his review for ''
MSN Music'', music critic
Robert Christgau
Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...
said that, misleading titles notwithstanding, the album "improves mightily when the volume is high enough to break the beats into components so they're impossible to ignore."
, writing in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', viewed the album as proof that hip hop "still has an audacious progressive fringe."
Kitty Empire of ''
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...
'' wrote that, although it is not game-changing, ''Black Up'' resonate with listeners in a way the conventional hip hop cannot because each track is "lean and muscular, never losing sight of the fact that hip-hop should writhe inexorably forward."
In 2019, ''
Pitchfork'' ranked ''Black Up'' at number 179 on their list of "The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s"; cultural critic
Hanif Abdurraqib
Hanif Abdurraqib (born August 25, 1983) is an American poet, essayist, and cultural critic. He is the author of 2016 poetry collection ''The Crown Ain't Worth Much'' (published as Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib), the 2017 essay collection ''They Can't ...
wrote: "From great mystery exploded an album of impossible vision."
Accolades
:
Track listing
Personnel
; Shabazz Palaces
* Ishmael Butler (aka Palaceer Lazaro) – vocals
* Tendai Maraire – instrumentation
; Additional personnel
*
THEESatisfaction – guest vocals
* Blood – mixing
* Dumb Eyes – artwork
* Knife Knights – production
Charts
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
2011 debut albums
Sub Pop albums
Shabazz Palaces albums