Shabazz Palaces

Shabazz Palaces’ Sub Pop debut Black Up turned a lot of heads upon its release in 2011 and rightly so. The album was a stellar slab of cosmically inclined hip-hop eschewing trad rap norms for a blend of higher-level sonics and spaced-out wordplay that was not only fresh but inspiring as hell. It’s no doubt raised expectations for the Seattle duo’s followup but for some Lese Majesty may struggle to reach that heightened plane.

Boasting 18 tracks and seven “astral suites” Lese Majesty may seem like a beast of an album but in reality it’s a compact 45-minute effort where most songs fail to reach the two-minute mark. And here’s where Lese Majesty takes a divisive stance: most tracks feel more like brief studio experiments and song fragments than fully developed pieces — something that stunts the record’s momentum as it flashes by at a rapid-fire pace.

And it’s a shame as Palaceer Lazaro (a.k.a. Digable Planets’ Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler) and Tendai Maraire hit on some great ideas as they embrace a sleeker more minimalist approach on their increasingly electronic productions.

Lese Majesty isn’t so much a full-on misstep as it is a record that comes with its fair share of challenges. Then again maybe it’s just another victim of high expectations.