Some records come into your life in the perfect Time & Space (see what I did there), and to listen to them is to be transported back to that very special place.
And so it is with my choice for my favourite hip hop album of all time. Of course, choosing one is crazy, a ridiculous idea. How could I not choose IT TAKES A NATION OF MILLIONS? How can you ignore BLACK ON BOTH SIDES? What kind of idiot doesn’t go for PAUL’S BOUTIQUE? I bounced around between some obvious big hitters, but all the while, I could feel the pull of what eventually became the very clear winner: REACHIN’, the 1993 debut for Philly via NYC trio Digable Planets. Man, what does this album mean to me? Let me count the ways, and let’s start by tracing my journey to that record.
Like a lot of 80s indie kids, my first introduction to hip hop actually came via John Peel, who regularly played everything from Biz Markie to Public Enemy on his show. The first song that really got under my skin, and indeed the very hip hop song I ever bought was the 7″ single of Eric B & Rakim’s Paid In Full – or to be clear, the Coldcut remix, sampling the Turkish singer Ofra Haza’s haunting vocal.
I flirted with a few other artist, but then fell pretty hard for Public Enemy’s IT TAKES A NATION OF MILLIONS, which felt vital and angry but also surprisingly accessible and full of strong hooks and powerful beats. But it was the herald of the Daisy Age and the flourishing of the Native Tongues bands that led me headlong into hip hop as something I listened to on a daily basis. No need to restate the genius of De La Soul or A Tribe Called Quest, but what strikes me now about their music is their playfulness and willingness to experiment, their lack of bravado bullshit, and their plundering of jazz music as much as old soul and RnB tracks.
When I went to Uni in the early 90s, I ended up making a friend with a proper jazz head, and strange though it feels to recount now, I had a year when I learned all about classic be-bop era jazz, and got to know everyone from Wes Mongtomery to Art Blakey to Dexter Gordon. Armed with this new love for a genre I didn’t previously understand, I then spent a year in the States in 92-93 as part of my degree (in American Studies). There were too many highlights to mention, though seeing Clinton getting inaugurated in Washington DC was pretty cool. But it’s the music that’s stayed with me now. Fuck me, I can remember every album I listened to that year.
The US was overflowing with grunge and post grunge at the time, which I absolutely hated with a passion. Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, all those guys. It was everywhere. I retreated into random corners, discovering Brazilian music via David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label, and getting into Afro-Belgian accapella group Zap Mama (yeah, I know, nothing’s changed!). But there two hip hop albums that year that became constant friends. One was Arrested Development’s debut, which was HUGE. And the other was Digable Planets. I remember walking onto the record store near the uni campus I was on, and they were playing Cool Like That. I recognised the Art Blakey sample, and on top of it floated this playful, almost feminine male vocal, rapping with such style and panache that it blew my head off. Needless to say, I left the store with that album.
DIGABLE PLANETS were – or rather are, now they’re touring this album again! – a 3 piece from Philadelphia who moved to New York. They seem to arrive fully formed as a concept – 2 men and 1 woman, all of shared rapping duties, and who sold themselves as interplanetary insects – Butterfly, Doodlbug & Ladybug. Their album, Reachin’, felt immediately like a manifesto for a new kind of hip hop – one that was as influenced by jazz and Blue Note records as James Brown or the usual sources. One that felt slick and cool and effortlessly stylish. Both opener It’s Good To Be Here and monster sunshine groove Where I’m From seemed to welcome the listener into their world. Grooves were funky, jams were slow, lyrics and rhymes seemed to flow so perfectly with the music that it was impossible to imagine they’d ever lived apart. I was absolutely besotted.
But it wasn’t all just good vibes, even if it always sounded that way – La Femme Fetal – is an utterly blistering attack on abortion rights told through a first person narrative that builds to a wider political point, and it’s, for me, one of the most articulate and brilliant political hip hop songs ever written. I know every line. I never thought, 30 years on, that it would be even more prescient now than it ever was then.
At the end of my year in the US, I went home clutching my Digable Planets tape. No one – and I mean NO ONE – in the UK had even heard of them. Everyone was listening to Suede and Britpop was riding over the horizon. But this album has never left me, and it never will.
It’s interesting comparing this to Arrested Development’s debut, which I think has fared less well with the years. That now sounds like a kind of pop-rap hybrid who’s appeal was really obvious, but it doesn’t sounds that revolutionary today. THIS album still does – fresh, vital and forward-thinking.
The band only made one other album, the completely excellent and more overtly political BLOWOUT COMB, before disbanding. Ishmael ‘Butterfly’ Butler went on to form the highly experimental Shabazz Palaces, who I lover and and I think everyone else on the pod hates! But they mostly disappeared from sight. And though this album went Gold in the US and they won a Grammy for best song in 93, Digable Planets seem to have got lost somewhere in the conversation about hip hop greats, which is crazy, because so many other hip hop artists have acknowledged the influence this had on them – from Mos Def to The Roots.
It’s so nice to see so much positivity about them now they’re touring the 30th anniversary of the album, so maybe people do finally understand that if you wanna get Cool like Dat, y’all need to dig Digable Planets.
thisisnothappening.net 