With bravado and precision, ever-evolving musician, producer, and rapper Ishmael Butler returns as Shabazz Palaces with It’s a Style Sport. It’s a Style Sport stays true to Shabazz Palaces' form in its daring show of experimental hip-hop and free-form poetry, while revealing a more reflective and upfront side of the Seattle musician. It’s a Style Sport finds Butler compiling what he’s learned from his storied career into a playful, shimmering portal, again proving himself an artist of chameleonic ambition, fuelled by curiosity, courage, and a limitless imagination.

The album is the product of a collaborative, communal effort with many of Butler’s touring band members: Evan Flory-Barnes on upright and electric bass; Thaddeus Turner on guitar, keyboards, and vocals; Kassa Overall on drums; Gerald Turner on bass and vocals; Marquetta Miller on vocals; and Carlos Overall on saxophone. Butler’s longtime friend and collaborator Erik Blood provided instrumentation, production, and mixing.

On It’s a Style Sport, a visage of Butler’s past lives as a rapper and performer is flung up against his contemporary persona, taunting and illuminating. At its core, It’s a Style Sport is an ode to the rap game of years past, when the playfully competitive ambition drove the genre to always outdo, outrun, and out-finesse your peers.