Video: Shabazz Palaces - Motion Sickness

Who are Shabazz Palaces? Tendai Maraire and Ishmael Butler from Seattle. What do they do? Make trippy avant-raps with wild drum beats (Ishmael’s on vocals and is the face of SP, while Tendai plays ancient instruments from his homeland, Zimbabwe). What do they do on a par with making trippy avant - raps? Make some of the most engaging, dark and cinematic video clips around, that push the very boundaries of video.

We know you’re super busy and only have a limited amount of time each day for music video watching (if any) but you won’t regret using your procrastination allocation to watch the clip for Shabazz Palaces' new track Motion Sickness, directed by TEAN. The clip is cinematic in scope, and Lynchian in style. The narrative follows the daily struggle of a female drug dealer and reality star. She drifts around a vibrantly coloured 70s poolside film set, wrangles with an unrelenting drug addiction, and deals in a drug running ring aided by corrupt police officials. This narrative is interspersed with a heart-string-tugging sideplot where the mother and her baby daughter are exploring outer space, while scattered across the whole clip are stills of disaster. There’s a twist at the end that points to bigger social themes. If this was the trailer for a new HBO show, I’d be ready to torrent it quicksmart.

Better yet – delve into Lese Majesty, the recent Shabazz Palaces album that Motion Sickness comes off. A follow-up to their 2011 universally-acclaimed debut record, Black Up, it’s out now on Sub Pop Records. You can stream the whole thing HERE.

More Shabazz Palaces Visual Highlights: 


An Echo from the Hosts that Profess Infinitum (2011) - Distorted images of sword-wielding assassins moving in time to the bass kick drums.

Dawn In Luxor (2014) - A video collaboration with French luxury brand Kenzo, which doubled as the lookbook for Kenzo’s Spring/Summer 2014 collection. To the sounds of the otherworldly opening track of Lese Majesty, this Kahlil Joseph directed narrative (Joseph has already worked with SP on the clip for Black Up, and is also responsible for the video for Flying Lotus’s Until the Quiet Comes) portrays a vibrantly clothed boy roaming an otherworldly Los Angeles, one awash in myths and visions.

#CAKE (2014) - This one’s directed by Hiro Murai, who has previously done visuals for Chet Faker, Childish Gambino, Earl Sweatshirt and more. Murai matches SP’s tripped-out productions with post-apocolyptic horror and surreal psychedelia.

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