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Bio From All Music Guide
Digable Planets formed in the early '90s, when Butterfly (b. Ishmael Butler, Brooklyn, NY) met Ladybug (b. Mary Ann Vieira, Silver Springs, MD) while attending college in Massachusetts. The two later hooked up with Doodlebug (b. Craig Irving, Philadelphia, PA), in Washington, D.C., and began recording. Their first single, "Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)," released on the Pendulum subsidiary of Warner, hit the R&B Top Ten while their debut, Reachin' (A New Refutation Of Time And Space), was a critical and commercial success. Digable Planets' resulting tour had a laid-back vibe more in keeping with a jazz show than any hip-hop concert, though the live musicians were criticized for doing little more than re-creating samples from the album. The trio solved that problem with the release of their second album, Blowout Comb, in late 1994. Much stronger than its predecessor, it used fewer samples and even included several solos. With no strong single to carry it, however, Blowout Comb's sales performance was not up to that of Reachin'. After Blowout Comb, Digable Planets basically dissolved due to the dreaded "creative differences". All three continued making music separately, but despite many promises that the recordings would become actual releases, nearly a decade passed before releases appeared from Butterfly's Cherrywine project, Ladybug's new billing Ladybug Mecca, and Doodlebug's Cee Knowledge. Then, just a few weeks shy of the ten-year anniversary of Blowout Comb, the three announced that they had reunited to record their third Digable Planets album. A compilation, Beyond the Spectrum: The Creamy Spy Chronicles, filled the gap while fans waited for its release. - John Bush
Cee Knowledge (Doodlebug) Bio From All Music Guide
Official Site: Cee Knowledge (Doodlebug), Ladybug Mecca & Cherrywine (Butterfly)
Digable Planets - Reachin' (A New Refutation Of Time And Space)
Digable Planets - Blowout Comb
Ladybug Mecca - Dogg Starr (Single)
MTV The First 1000 Years: Hip Hop
Sharkey - Sharkey's Machine (Cherrywine)
SWV - New Beginning (Butterfly)
Though they were not the first to synthesize jazz and hip-hop, Digable Planets epitomized the laid-back charm of jazz hipsters better than any group before or since. The trio's 1993 debut album, Reachin' (A New Refutation Of Time And Space), was a mellow ride packed with samples from Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, and Curtis Mayfield, and the single "Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)" became a Top 20 pop hit. After earning a Grammy for Best New Duo or Group and embarking on an ambitious tour that included several live musicians, the Planets returned in late 1994 with their best album yet. Blowout Comb continued the group's jazz-rap fusion, but also saw them branching out to embrace the old school sound of the street as well.
Hip-hop in the '80s, jazz in the '60s, and funk in the '70s are all well-documented revolutionary expressions in Africa-American music. Less familiar, though, is their meeting ground in Cee Knowledge and the Cosmic Funk Orchestra in 2000, and beyond. Craig Irving, the Philadelphia hip-hop vocalist better known as Doodlebug of the defunct Grammy-winning hip-hop trio Digable Planets, adopted the moniker Cee Knowledge while studying the Nation of Islam in 1988 at Howard University. Knowledge grew up in a city full of musical traditions from the cosmic jazz of the Sun Ra Arkestra to the new Philly soul of Bilal and Musiq Soulchild and the groundbreaking hip-hop of the Roots and Eve. It was a place for Knowledge to absorb all kinds of music from early hip-hop and '70s funk to avant-garde jazz and new Philly soul. Knowledge's mind drifted south of Philadelphia for his funk sources in the music of Parliament-Funkadelic, the Bar-Kays, and Barry White. He first expressed his love of funk, jazz, and hip-hop together in Digable Planets, which won a Grammy for Best Rap Performance in 1993. At Howard University, he met Mary Ann "Ladybug" Vierra, a Brazilian-American singer from Maryland. With Ishmael "Butterfly" Butler, they founded Digable Planets in 1991 and released a highly acclaimed single, "Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)." When Digable Planets disbanded in 1995 after two successful albums and a handful of warmly received singles, Knowledge felt a void in his music career. From early concerts at the Deer Park Tavern in Delaware and at the Philadelphia Music Conference, he forged the early lineup for Cee Knowledge and the Cosmic Funk Orchestra from hip-hop and jazz musicians in Delaware and Philadelphia in 1999. For his first solo project, he released Live From the 7th Dimension, Vol. 1 early in 2000 and Return of the Cosmic Funk in September 2000. He remixed the latter to include tracks featuring vibraphonist Roy Ayers, Ladybug, and members of the Sun Ra Arkestra for release in 2001. Knowledge and his 11-piece group — which featured jazz and hippie jam band guitarist Mark Turner; saxist-flutist Elliott Levin (Sun Ra, DJ Logic); reggae bassist and didgeridoo player Rob Griffith; Haitian keyboardist Giscard Xavier; jazz and reggae drummer Mad Max; rappers Jahsun, Saadiyq Abdul Majid, and Kasim "Kai Chi"; background vocalist Loretta Gooden; and DJ Live Diablo — played progressive hip-hop filled with a funkified brand of streetwise jazz poetry. Knowledge showed dissatisfaction with all the emphasis on money, sex, and violence in much of hip-hop in the late '90s and early 2000 in preference for an expression of peace, love, political action, inner strength, happiness, and hope for the future. In 2002, Cee Knowledge released the Space is the Place single for the Counterflow label. The single featured the Sun Ra Arkestra. - Robert Hicks
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