One of the greatest things about Hip Hop music back in the 90's was the sheer diversity in it and NYC's Digable Planets were one trio that held the Jazz/Rap crown proudly, I was listening to their debut album tonight and was transported back to a greater time before the Internet and cellphones, before trash Soundcloud "Rappers" before the industry well and truly massacred and butchered Hip Hop and sold it back to the masses as pieces of ignorance, vanity, superficiality and polluted it with brain-dead, fake and plastic lames riding a wave but the saddest past is that these idiots just cannot see that they are absolute slaves and once their wave is done, they are done!
Ahem back to the topic haha...DP were so smooth that it should have been a crime, Ladybug Mecca, Doodlebug and Butterfly were clearly students of not just Jazz but Funk and Soul and incorporated this into their music effortlessly with rhymes brimming with positive antidotes and superb production, they still influence Hip Hop and I recently heard a track that was pretty much just "The Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)" chopped up.
The remix to "Where I'm From" was simplistic but so dope, a lone clarinet sample drifting in and out over a deep bass and past clipped "Funky Drummer" drums and the video for the original version was just as ill, watching the Digables rhyme while snow fell on them was a sight to behold.
They are still touring and had another reunion in 2016.
"Where I'm From (Aural G. Ride 12')"
Bonus cut: "Dedicated"
