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2014 studio album by Shabazz Palaces
Lese Majesty is the second studio album by American hip hop duo Shabazz Palaces, released on July 29, 2014. The album features contributions from Thee Satisfaction’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.
Background
In an interview with Hypetrak in February 2013, Palaceer Lazaro announced he and Maraire were working on a second album. Of the record's sound, he said "I don't know. I doubt that it will sound much like it. It will probably sound… I don't know. We've left that. That is kind of far behind us now. There will be some similarities I guess, because we are who we are. Other than that, it's not gonna sound much like it at all."
The album was first premiered at Seattle's Pacific Science Center Laser Dome in April 2014.
Lese Majesty has received acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 81, which indicates "universal acclaim", based on 36 reviews.
AllMusic critic David Jeffries wrote: "With Lazaro frequently falling back on his warm and welcoming Butterfly-era flow, the album balances the avant with the approachable in a manner few others would even attempt." Jeffries further stated: "It's a shame that such a vanguard effort is weakened by a few clever and jokey interludes that don't warrant a return, but that just leaves Shabazz Palaces room for a proper masterpiece as the brilliant Lese Majesty is so very close." Paula Mejia of The A.V. Club stated that the record "spans universes, sonically and otherwise," and is "Butler's most extreme refusal of the hip-hop status quo, boasting erratic instrumentals and subtle shit-talk toward haters subverting the canon." Reviewing for Entertainment Weekly, Kyle Anderson thought that "the slightly-loosened-up attitude helps turn shambolic backdoor bangers such as "They Come in Gold" into intimate headphone masterpieces." The Guardian critic Alexis Petridis stated: "As it is, not every experiment on Lese Majesty works, but when they do, the results are spectacular. And even when they don't, the lovely sense that you're listening to an album genuinely unlike any other is pretty overwhelming."
The Irish Times's Jim Carroll called the record "a brave, trancey, psych flow of sounds that never tires or runs awry." NME critic Louis Pattison described the record as "one with the confidence to reject tired old models and build its own future logic," further stating the result to be "mysterious, spiritual, and funky as shit." Craig Jenkins of Pitchfork wrote: "The soul of Shabazz Palaces is pairing next-gen sounds with classic brass-tacks show-and-prove emceeing, and Lese Majesty tugs those extremes as far as they've ever been pulled; that it never shows signs of wear speaks to the strength of the bond." Writing for Rolling Stone, Will Hermes remarked that "Butler's dazzling feel for 21st-century psychedelia pushes this well past nostalgia tripping – and while the verbal abstraction gets thick, there's serious pleasure in plumbing it." Spin's Anupa Mistry regarded the album as "more sonically relaxed and triumphant" than the group's past two records and stated: "In mirroring and transcending the schizoid, rootless form of digital society, it's an attempt to help people cope with the culture." Speaking on the live premiere of the album at Seattle's Pacific Science Center Laser Dome, The Stranger critic Mike Force wrote: "There was no need for drugs, or even the dazzling light show, since the music's fathoms-deep dubscapes and strategically predatory beats equaled the angular and smoky psychedelic visuals—each track already dazzled by a universe of deep-space stars, clouds of galactic gases, and the bright trails of wandering balls of ice."
