Shabazz Palaces - Fast Learner ft. Purple Tape Nate

What this video is

Released March 10, 2020 — one week before the COVID-19 global shutdown — as the lead single from 'The Don of Diamond Dreams' (Sub Pop, April 17, 2020), the video encapsulates a late-era pre-pandemic Seattle experimental hip-hop moment. Shabazz Palaces, composed of Ishmael Butler (formerly of Digable Planets) and Tendai Maraire, had been one of Sub Pop's most adventurous signings for nearly a decade. The video's…

Why it matters

A defining artifact of the 2010s-into-2020s Afrofuturist experimental hip-hop wave, 'Fast Learner' synthesizes '80s electro, Brainfeeder-adjacent beat music, and astral Auto-Tune rap under a Pacific Northwest indie label. The video reinforces the track's genre-blurring as visual poetics, treating…

The director

Stephan Gray is a Seattle-based director and director of photography with over 22 directorial music video credits documented on IMVDb (imvdb.com). He has been a long-term visual collaborator with Shabazz Palaces, having directed multiple videos for the group…