Shabaka: The ‘Of The Earth’ is your jazz-fused happy place
Credit: Atiba Jefferson
Sometimes you just have to kick back and let the music take you to melodic places in a way only musician Shabaka can do - my goodness. The new Of The Earth album? Absolutely blissful.
An audio journey you just zone out to for nearly 50 minutes. Embrace the uplifting trip, Attackers.
Today, internationally acclaimed musician, composer, and producer Shabaka releases his new solo albumOf The Earth, out now via his imprint Shabaka Records. Written, produced, and mixed entirely by Shabaka, the record marks a defining moment in his artistic evolution, expanding his practice into beatmaking, production, and lyricism.
Over the past decade, Shabaka has reshaped global perceptions of British jazz and experimental music through projects including Sons of Kemet, Shabaka and the Ancestors, and The Comet Is Coming, moving fluidly between jazz, electronic, spiritual, and diasporic traditions. On Of The Earth, those threads converge as rap, production, flute, and sax exist on equal footing, unveiling a fuller picture of his creative language – a grounded yet exploratory statement that pushes beyond genre.
The album’s singles offered early glimpses into its expanded sonic palette. “Eyes Lowered” introduced the project’s meditative, textural side while marking Shabaka’s first recorded rap performance. “Marwa The Mountain” channels the communal energy of Caribbean street processions, drawing from traditions like Haitian rara and Dominican brass bands while grounding its rhythm in the raw pulse of hand-played desk percussion. “I went back to the rhythms I used to tap on school desks as a teenager,” Shabaka explains. “A Future Untold” stretches melody across suspended, ambient textures, while “Dance In Praise” captures the album’s kinetic spirit – a processional piece he describes as being fueled by “unhinged dreams of diasporic Caribbean futurism.”
On Of The Earth, Shabaka returns to the saxophone with renewed clarity following his appearance at Louis Moholo-Moholo’s memorial concert last year. Years of flute study – spanning traditions from Japan, the Americas, and beyond – reshaped his understanding of resonance, breath, and form, fundamentally altering his relationship to melody and flow upon returning to the horn.
Developed in part during the pandemic, the album also reflects a deepened engagement with beatmaking and electronic production. Working hands-on in DAWs and samplers, Shabaka approached the studio as a laboratory, building grooves from fragmented loops and self-sampled phrases while drawing influence from the time-bending swing of J Dilla and the architectural sequencing of Flying Lotus.
That rhythmic experimentation also led to the album’s most unexpected turn: Shabaka rapping. What began as a playful reversal inspired by André 3000 evolved into disciplined study, revisiting ’90s rap touchstones like Nas, The Notorious B.I.G., and Wu-Tang Clan while treating breath and cadence as technical craft. Lyrically aligned with the nonlinear poetics of billy woods and ELUCID, his verses prioritize emotional throughlines over tidy theses. Across the album, voice becomes another vessel for transmission, used to explore psychological pressure, digital saturation, and collective disorientation, as well as the possibility of recovery through stillness and awareness.
As a result, Shabaka sounds liberated. Though faint echoes of prior projects remain, they manifest as ancestral DNA rather than callbacks. Stepping forward as producer, vocalist, instrumentalist, and sonic architect, he refuses to let genre or expectation define his reach. Of The Earth feels less like a pivot than an unveiling: straightforward yet dimensional, rooted yet exploratory, vulnerable yet assured. He’s not trying to provide answers or present a fixed ideology. As ever, Shabaka remains in motion, chasing the future he hopes the music will become.
Following the album’s release, Shabaka will bring Of The Earth to life on stage this Spring across the US, UK, and Europe with a live show blending improvisation, live instrumentation, and real-time manipulation of beats and electronic textures. The tour begins in Philadelphia at Solar Myth on March 25th, with stops in New York, Knoxville, and Chicago before returning overseas (full dates below; more info and tickets here).
STREAM OF THE EARTH
https://shabaka.ffm.to/oftheearth
SHABAKA OF THE EARTH (SHABAKA RECORDS)
TRACKLISTING
1. A Future Untold
2. Those Of The Sky
3. Go Astray
4. Step Lightly
5. Call The Power
6. Dance In Praise
7. Ol’ Time African Gods
8. Marwa The Mountain
9. Light The Way
10. Stand Firm
11. Space Time
12. Eyes Lowered
US TOUR DATES:
25th March - Solar Myth Philadelphia
26th March - Knockdown Center, NY
28th March - Big Ears, Knoxville (Headline show + Collaboration w Thurston Moore)
29th March - Constellation, Chicago
SHABAKA ONLINE
