#43: Digable Planets — Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space) (1993)

New York, NY — Pendulum/Elektra Records

Imagine, if you will, a small, dimly lit, simple perhaps, but not unkempt, underground jazz bar. There are few tables and the sitting space is cramped, almost as tiny as the stage where a few instruments and microphones are currently crammed on, awaiting for the band to appear. As if by magic, a soulful, steady bassline gradually appears and permeates the vicinity, as if the instrument was being played by an invisible entity; no, as if the sound was emanating from the walls, as if the little bar had a mind of its own and was singing its jazzy lullabies to you. Soon, the drums and horns join in, and the sheer smoothness of the vibes enveloping you has you glued in place, unable and unwilling to escape its grasp. At some point, this ghostly, diaphanous trio half-materializes in front of the microphones; their voices sound like instruments, their cadence follows along with the drums and bass, and, among meandering bars and whimsical wordplaying, they unravel a story in front of your very ears. And this is where the fun really begins…

That is, more or less, how it feels to listen to one of my favorite rap albums, Digable Planet’s 1993 debut album Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space), one of the most remarkably jazzy and smooth records of its era. Founded in Philadelphia during the late 80s, the group composed of Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler, Mariana “Ladybug Mecca” Vieira and Craig “Doodlebug” Irving (plus hidden fourth member) took their sweet time before recording and releasing their debut effort, but came out swinging when the time was ripe: Reachin’ is generally hailed as a stand-out album from this epoch of hip-hop, bringing forth an especially clean and, dare I say, methodic way of doing jazz rap.

Handled almost completely by Butterfly, the group’s de facto mastermind, the production immediately reminds us of cornerstone jazz rap acts such as De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest (very obviously major influences to DP). However, it sets itself apart by virtue of adopting a remarkably minimalistic approach to production. Like Q-Tip’s production in The Low End Theory, the instrumentals are composed of “…a soulful yet somber bassline, a steadily groovy drum break […] and next to nothing else […] the main thing here is making it work so efficiently with so little material”. Butterfly, however, prefers to make it even cleaner and more stripped-back, with a noticeably higher degree of separation between samples, mix-wise. It makes me think of something I once said to justify my relative distaste for ATCQ’s earliest albums: when it comes to jazz rap, production-wise, I’m usually into the extremes — so I usually like the very minimal and clean-sounding stuff, like DG, or the exaggerated, busy, almost frenetic stuff of late Tribe, for example, and the “middle-of-the-road”, dirty style of earlier jazz rap just doesn’t do it for me as much. And there’s no overstating how clean this all sounds: Butterfly’s ability at combining samples in a way that makes it sound like they were made for each other in the first place is parallel to Q-Tip’s, and the non-invasive but still very precise mixing does wonders at laying it all up together very tightly and comfortably.

Most beats follow that safe old recipe of figuring out some sampled loops that go well together and running with it, but Butterfly allows himself to play around with different little details and chops whenever he feels like, which gives the production an extra sheen, some additional polish and character, and makes for an overall more exciting experience. I will say that this album, in a way, is very samey. Flows, deliveries, vibes and moods are pretty consistent, and they seem more than happy to figure out one thing that they think works and just run with it all throughout, similarly to, for instance, Black Sheep or Das EFX. However, to me it feels different than A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing or Dead Serious by virtue of having a substantial enough schtick, enough to carry it from start to end and not turn into a boring slog. Simply put, when looked at from a more general perspective, the album has a solid, flowy continuity, but when examined more closely you can see that the individual songs, while aesthetically coherent with each other, also possess their own unique little personalities that keep it fresh all throughout, be it in a cursory, unnatentive listen, or a focused, analytical jam.

I want to talk about the rapping itself, and I want to talk about the personas that Butterfly, Ladybug and Doodlebug build for themselves through them. I can insist a little more in the Das EFX and Black Sheep comparison, since the Digable Planets also have lighthearted whimsy and jovial musings as a centerpiece of their personas; differently from their predecessors, though, the DPs manage to hit a sweet spot when it comes to being a silly billy. They take themselves just seriously enough as to never overdo it and compromise the quality of their art for the sake of being, eh, “funny”, but not so much as to not allow themselves some unpreoccupied joy. They’re doing their thing, they’re having their fun, and if you wanna come with them and have a good time, go right ahead, it’s your choice.

Their writing is, for the most part, an archetypical example of that early 90s Native Tongues-adjacent brainy, whimisical, kinda surrealistic aesthetic, with an especially cute twist to it. That’s right: cute. Almost everything about their performance has a sometimes subtle, sometimes overt, always present, positively cute undertone to it. Much of it surely comes from their voices’ smooth timbres and inflections, paired with the general mellowness of themes and writing, which make for a remarkably easy-going experience. The three members’ individual styles are basically the same at this point — if memory serves me right, by the time Blowout Comb, their second and last album as a group, came out, they each had developed their characteristic way of rapping considerably more — even though there are small but consistently noticeable differences between their approaches: Butterfly, for instance, is somewhat more pyrotechnical and witty, as well as more of a protagonist compared to his group mates; Ladybug feels even more laid-back than her counterparts, although she is capable and willing to get remarkably snarky at times; and Doodlebug’s verses, while a tad awkward and disjointed, are also hands down more surreal and trippy.

Their writing is anything but simplistic. Again, it’s in that ATCQ/DLS-informed line of complex, evocative, sometimes non-linear and almost free associative in a Freudian way, but also lightehearted and good-spirited lyrics, with special attention given to wordplay, in a manner that manages to play with both the meaning and the sound of the words at the same time. For an example, check out these selected stretches out of Butterfly’s absolutely killer verse out of Where I’m From, one of my favorite lyrical moments out of this whole shebang:

Boogie jive and rap is life where I’m from
Where I’m from, Ahmad play with Izzy where I’m from
Where I’m from, it be like run your coat black
Jupiter, keeps her fat beats by the pack
Where I’m from, nappy hair is life
We be reading Marx where I’m from
The kids be rocking Clarks where I’m from
You turn around your cap, you talk over a beat
[…]
The fire hoses blow
It’s purple when it snow
I do a hit and go, split
It’s hip, what’s hip?
When hip is just the norm
’Cause Planets pledge allegiance to the funk in all its forms
The kinks, the dance, the prints in all the shirts
My grandmother told my mother that it’s Africa at work
[…]
The lip we sip can’t house the nine zips
For rock we can’t do nothing, for this we come equipped
Off disc, off tape, rap blasting ’til from eight
The really truly fat the fly on the flip
Cocoa gotta know, how Planets gotta roll
Speak the mega cool, get funky as a goal
It’s calm, relax, we’re only some new jacks
That acts from the funk but don’t play the role
Where you from

You can see what I’m talking about, right? This level of word architecture is definitely not easy to achieve, which only makes it more impressive when you consider just how easy they make it look. This specific example is more about that old hip-hop thing of hyping yourself up in a way or another, but the thematic variety in here really is a thing to behold, both due to its array and its originality: we have songs arguing for legalization of abortion and discussion of reproductive rights (La Femme Fetal), emotionally intense, deep reflections about the artist’s place and condition in the world (Examination of What), self-insert fictions about the golden age of jazz and hard drugs (Last of the Spiddyocks) and vaporwavey, timeline-bending speculative fictions about black music (Jimmi Diggin’ Cats), among others.

I could go on for a lot longer, but I believe my points have been extensively laid out and proven many times over. Again, I’m not impartial by any means, but I do believe that my adoration for this album is well justified and understandable. So, I will leave you on that note, with my most express reccomendations that you check this out ASAP.

Favorite tracks

Pacifics: the absolutely incredible bassline that introduces this joint hints at many great things to come, and what comes does not disappoint. High-level back-to-back rhyming makes this feel almost like a posse cut, with witty bars and a pleasant slice-of-life tone to top it off. “We venture through the streets in search of funky beats/ Extensive is the travels and it’s heavy on the sneaks/ Yeah, it’s kicking out the speakers of the Sunday morning jeepers/ My man, do Planets do it lovely? Am I my brother’s keeper?/ We foot it to the park where the swoon units walk/ And sit with the Phoenicians digging on musicians/ Hanging with the rebels sipping on a Snapple/ Bugging with my crew, just tripping in the Apple”

Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat): what can I say? This is simply one of the greatest hip-hop tracks ever made, everything is absolutely perfect but the beat just manages to take the cake by virtue of being a god damn masterclass in minimalistic sampling and songwriting. It’s one of those tracks that positively takes me to a place (the little jazz club from the opening paragraph) through the sheer force created by a combination of music, words, stories and vibes. “We, like the breeze, flow straight out of our lids/ Them, they got moved by these hard-rock Brooklyn kids/ Us, floor rush when the DJ’s booming classics/ You dig the crew on the fattest hip-hop record/ He touch the kinks and sinks into the sounds […] Check it out, man, I groove like that, I’m smooth like that/ I jive like that, I roll like that/ Yeah, I’m thick like that, I stack like that/ I’m down like that, I’m black like that/ Well, yo, I funk like that, I’m phat like that/ I’m in like that, ’cause I swing like that/ We jazz like that, we freak like that/ We zoom like that, we out”

La Femme Fetal: by far the most different song in here, this consists of one giant continuous verse, written and delivered by Butterfly in a decicedly spoken word-ish style, with a heavy-handed psychy touch to it. It consists of a curious morality tale about the importance of reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, with some pretty creative writing and a very great Last Poets sample to top it off. “You remember my boyfriend Sid, that fly kid who I love?/ Well, our love was often a verb and spontaneity has brought a third/ But due to our youth and economic state, we wish to terminate/ About this we don’t feel great, but baby, that’s how it is […] The pro-lifers harass me outside the clinic/ And call me a murderer, now that’s hate/ So needless to say, we’re in a mental state of debate […] They don’t really give a damn about life/ They just don’t want a woman to control her body/ Or have the right to choose/ But baby that ain’t nothin’/ They just want a male finger on the button/ Because if you say war, they will send them to die by the score/ Aborting mission should be your volition […] Rhythms and sounds, spinning around/ Confrontations across the nation/ Your block, my block, dreadlocks/ What a shock, land of the free/ But not me, not me…”