“See I’m just like you, yeah I know I’m a mess / Take a minute to thank, take an hour to dress / Got this pain in my neck, pain from starin’ at stars / I can’t find the remote, drinkin’ drivin’ my car… SLOW DOWN! For what? Slow down! For what?”

I’ve been listening to a lot of Seattle hip-hop classics lately, like this 2009 debut EP from Shabazz Palaces, alternately called Eagles Soar, Oil Flows or simply the Shabazz Palaces EP. I was talking with someone at a show about how what’s amazing with this group are all the ways they’re breaking all the so-called “rules” all at the same time. Some of this music is out of time, sometimes out-of-phase, the bass and treble levels inverted and broken, instruments arrive in and quickly depart with seeming randomness, or wait, is this just two guys with drums?!?

An elusive chorus finally presents itself just as the song is ending… This, bouncing beat, sometimes hostility, is then interposed with moments of such intense charm and beauty. There’s an exacting precision here. It’s like listening to… I don’t know. There’s nothing really like this. Lives are lived in this span of time.