About

“The jazz rap trio’s 1993 debut questions the very fabric of our existence while celebrating its nuances. Seconds into any Digable Planets’ song and you’ll hear it: the Afrofuturism of Sun Ra, the unorthodox free jazz of Albert Ayler, the black spirituality of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, the spoken-word funk of the Last Poets. Freedom, progressivism, oneness, harmony, and serendipity are the core tenets that would come to define the rap trio and their ideology throughout their career. How fitting, then, that intuition and a kiss of luck would birth their first jazz rap odyssey, 1993’s Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space), which is both a product of community and exploration.

Digable Planets followed in the conscious footsteps of the ’90s New York collective Native Tongues—spearheaded by A Tribe Called Quest, Jungle Brothers, and De La Soul—which was cultivating a more positive-minded, jazz-influenced rap community. Linking from varying backgrounds, the three Planets MCs—Ishmael Butler, Craig Irving, and Mary Ann Vieira—sought to embody the inclusivity their forebears had brought to rap. Reachin’ tested the limits of hip-hop alchemy, creating otherworldly transmissions that sampled hard-bopping jazz acts. They turned Karl Marx, Sonny Rollins, and Parliament into pillars of their cool, communal space.” – Pitchfork

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