Improvising cellist and guitarist Ishmael Ali moved from Columbus, Ohio, to Chicago in 2013 to study music at DePaul, and he’s lived here ever since—except for a brief stint in New York that ended ...

Ishmael Butler has been writing charged-up, innovative rap since 1992’s seminal hip-hop single with Digable Planets, “Rebirth of the Slick (Cool Like Dat).” When Digable Planets retired, he dabbled in ...

Time travelers live among us. Take, for example, Ishmael Butler, frontman for the classic ’90s rap group Digable Planets and the current avant-garde duo Shabazz Places. Both are playing Seattle this ...

The music created by Shabazz Palaces is otherworldly. The studio albums and EPs, two of each, that the Seattle experimental hip-hop duo has released since forming in 2009 contain grand tapestries ...

There are hardly any active rappers/producers who’ve been successful in different eras, but Seattle’s Ishmael Butler is one of them. His old trio Digable Planets won a Grammy back in 1994 for their ...

He calls himself Ishi Ishmael. That's a pseudonym - his family didn't want to be associated with his research interest, the Tribe of Ishmael, which was called, in its time, America's "worst" family.