It’s testament to their timeless music that hip-hop trio Digable Planets have released only two albums, 1993’s Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space) and 1994’s Blowout Comb, yet are still able to tour the world and pull sizeable crowds over three decades later.
It helps that both albums are jazz-rap masterpieces that sound just as fresh and boundary-pushing as the day they were released, with breakout ’93 hit “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)” even scoring Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler, Craig “Doodlebug” Irving, and Mary Ann “Ladybug Mecca” Vieira a Grammy in 1994 for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group (beating heavyweights like Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Cypress Hill).
Rather than simply thank God and the record label, Butler’s Grammys speech went like this: “We’d like everybody to think about the people right outside this door that’s homeless. As you sit in these $900 seats… they out there not eating at all. Also, we’d like to say to the universal Black family that one day we’re gonna recognise our true enemy. We’re gonna stop attacking each other, and maybe then we’ll get some changes going on.”
As “children of revolutionaries,” Butler says the off the cuff speech was a natural extension of their heritage.
“X Clan and Public Enemy was like the Beatles to us, you know what I’m saying?” he says from his home studio in Seattle. “We were almost on the outside of activism because we were making music, so we always had a keen sense of not forgetting to contribute what we could to that aspect of life. So it wasn’t something that we even really talked about [beforehand].
“First of all, I didn’t think we was gonna win, you feel me, because of who we was up against. So it wasn’t like we had prepared speeches and shit like that. It was just that sense of purpose, of duty, that our people had given us, that we spoke to in that moment.”
“Any intruder that comes to my house gets bopped in the head with a Grammy,” jokes Irving from his home in Fresno, California. “‘And the winner is… BOINK!’”
Before the Gold records and Grammy wins, Digable Planets were a group dreamt up by a solo Butler, who was searching for the right members to join him.
“Back in the day, so we talking late Eighties, early Nineties, in that era of hip-hop, it was groups that were more prevalent,” says Butler. “So, when me and Cee [Irving] was coming up in that era, like they had Rakim and stuff like that, but you wanted to be a part of a group really, more so than a solo artist. I had come up with the name Digable Planets and was working on demos, but I always knew like, man, I gotta get a group. That was just something you felt like you had to do.”
“He told me about his group after a little while and asked me to be a part of it, and I was like, ‘Hell yeah,’” Irving enthuses. “He let me hear some of the ideas he was coming up with and sample ideas and stuff, and I thought all of it was super interesting and very progressive. And I was down with it. I’m glad I met this brother right here.”
Credit: Derek Brad
Irving introduced Butler to his friend Mary Ann Vieira, another fellow hip-hop devotee. Vieira looks back on the early days of the group with fondness, calling them “incredibly rewarding.”
“As three friends united by a shared passion for hip-hop culture, we formed a unique bond,” says Vieira from Los Angeles. “I was on a personal journey, delving into various schools of thought in search of deeper meaning, and I truly believe that this quest brought us together. It became unmistakably clear that we had something special when we sat in Craig’s grandmother’s living room and crafted our very first song together. That moment marked the beginning of an extraordinary collaboration.”
Vieira explains that hip-hop deeply resonated with her in her youth due to it “evoking the rich traditions of my Afro-Brazilian musical heritage. Its dynamic call and response patterns, coupled with powerful, rhythmic beats, revealed to me the transformative power of self-expression — inspiring me to share my voice in a way that’s authentically my own.”
Although rap beef has been on the world stage lately thanks to Kendrick Lamar and Drake’s very public feud, Butler says the early Nineties, when Digable Planets were leading the jazz-rap charge with acts like Gang Starr and A Tribe Called Quest, was a much more peaceful time.
“The jazz thing, it was cool to be around because there was so much expression and creativity, a lot of unity,” he says. “A lot of friendly competition, meaning, everybody was trying to top each other, but there wasn’t really too much beef. Different types of gangsta rappers was cool with, quote-unquote, backpack rappers. It was less segregated at that time, which was cool.”
Still, turmoil did eventually impact the group from within, the trio deciding to split up in 1995.
“At that point our bond was starting to break a little bit; it wasn’t as strong as it used to be on the second album,” says Irving. “We didn’t have the inner strength as a group to maintain through the drama that was going on at the time. And being immature and young, we didn’t deal with it the best we could, and a lot of outside forces began to dismantle what we created. It just wasn’t tenable anymore to keep it together and so it was obvious we had to move on and try other things.”
“When you’re young, you have an invincibility and you don’t have the advantage of hindsight,” adds Butler. “Like we looking back now and being like, ‘Oh man, that’s something that we should have maintained, something that valuable and that cool,’ but at the time, you feel like, ‘Oh, I’ll just do something else.’”
The Digables managed to patch things up a decade later, and have been regularly touring the world ever since. The group have played on stage with a live band ever since their inception, and they’ll be doing just that when they play at WOMADelaide on March 10th, following dates in Sydney and Melbourne, with a set that will belatedly celebrate the 30th anniversary of Blowout Comb.
“We’ve always had a good time Down Under man, for real,” says Butler. “[A live band is important] in terms of loosening up the show, being able to kinda update [the music], performing it differently at different times, throwing little musical wrinkles into the set… it does allow you a little bit more dexterity than just rocking with the turntables.
“It’s been a while since I’ve been able to do new forms of expression with Digable Planets, but when we get on stage, it’s always a new experience to me. Every night it feels like a different show, even though we’re performing the same songs, because of the live band and our willingness to be very creative and open to trying to do new things with it. So that’s dope.”
New music from Digable Planets may be possible but is still uncertain (“We’ve been having some dialogue about what is it gonna sound like, what are we trying to accomplish, and what kind of taste do we want to express at this time,” says Butler), but one thing Butler is certain of is his undying love for hip-hop.
“The only thing I will say is that [in the beginning], we was fans, man, we loved this form of music,” he says. “We were seduced by it and we gave our life over to it. So we must have put something in [our music] that expresses that magic and it lasts throughout generations as something essential, you feel me? It’s a love that people can feel because we put a lot of love and excitement into it. That’s how we really felt.”
Digable Planets perform in Sydney March 6th, Melbourne March 8th, and at WOMADelaide March 10th.
