Shabazz Palaces exists at the point of sublimation. For the past 15 years, Ishmael Butler and his cast of collaborators have drifted further and further into the outer reaches, deconstructing and reassembling hip-hop, jazz, and kosmische conventions into sprawling, proggy rhapsodies. Their grip on song structure has loosened with each record and, by their most recent, 2024’s Exotic Birds of Prey , nearly dissipated altogether. Butler’s imperturbable, reverb-soaked raps can feel like communiques from some cosmic entity ruminating on our stardust origins and infinite potentialities. It’s a Style Sport , the latest Shabazz Palaces album, delivers plenty of that signature haze, but it plants one foot on solid ground, reaching through space and time without becoming completely untethered.

Over seven full-lengths, Butler has created a multi-volume instruction manual for transcendence.…