Tag: Ardmore Music Hall

September 13, 2016

LIFE’S BIGGEST QUESTIONS: DIGABLE PLANETS

Interview by Rasheed Rafik Abdellah
Words by Jay Balfour

In hip-hop especially, the perfected sophomore record is a rare phenomenon, but Digable Planets have always been charming outliers. The trio, whose members coalesced in Brooklyn in the early 1990s from Seattle, Philadelphia and Silver Spring, found their stride with Blowout Comb, their second and final album and one of hip-hop’s most unheralded classics.

In many ways, Blowout Comb is about blackness and Brooklyn, and the specific blackness of Brooklyn in the ‘90s. (Even straightforwardly so, with the album carrying song titles like “Black Ego” and “Borough Check.”) Musically, Blowout Comb hinges on the trio’s fascination with jazz, and few hip-hop records have ever accomplished such an intellectual dialogue with the genre.

More than 20 years later, the members of Digable Planets have let their collective classic stand as a swan song, but they were revisiting the material for eager fans when we spoke in Ardmore earlier this month. “My daughter was here tonight,” Doodlebug said. “They love music. They’re very supportive, so it makes it easy on me.”

Despite their organic live reunions, the trio have spent their latter careers carving out individual paths. “We’re just working on different things,” Doodlebug contends. “Everybody in the group is working on different projects. You know, musicians, they all have side projects. At some point, we’ll probably get back together again and do some stuff.”

For his part, Irving is currently prepping the release of a comic book inspired by a mixtape he released in 2013. “It’s called The Epic of the Heaven and Earth Association,” he said of the comic. “My lawyer and I wrote it together. It’s based on the storyline of the [Afronauts vs. Wretchen]. I use a lot of musical metaphors. I use my journey through the music world and growing up in Philly.”

Ladybug Mecca, meanwhile, is eying a new and ambitious musical collaboration with a handful of legends. “BROOKZILL! is a project created by Prince Paul and myself,” she said, referencing the legendary producer of De La Soul fame. Rodrigo Brandao and Don Newkirk, a Brazilian artist and another De La-affiliated producer respectively, round out the lineup. “From first conversations, [it’s] about 10 years in the making,” Mecca said of their upcoming debut album, planned for October release. “It was written and recorded in Brazil, Atlanta, New York, Long Island, Queens. It incorporates a lot of very special musicians and guest appearances. It basically fuses the soul of Brazil with Brooklyn hip-hop. We sample and recreate a lot of Afro-Brazilian, candomblé inspired samples. Really old-school records. And throw a hip-hop beat basically under it. And whichever one stuck, we went with it.” Not unlike Digable’s Blowout Comb, BROOKZILL! relies on the intersection between two great black arts. “Hip-hop and those records from Brazil, the root is the tambor, the drum. So, yeah, it’s all linked by Africa.”

Ish, finally, has mined what is perhaps the most successful of the group’s post-Digable careers as one half of the duo Shabazz Palaces, a Seattle-based project that flirts with avant garde tendencies. “We working on a new one now, finishing it up soon,” Butler said of a forthcoming Palaces record, but shying away from details.” More pressingly, Shabazz was on the verge of opening for Radiohead for a two-night stint in L.A. when we spoke. “The Radiohead thing, when they decided to go on tour, they picked certain groups to open in certain areas. I know they see it as giving some of the groups they like an opportunity …They just invited cats to do it. I been rocking with them for a long time. I got on them at Okay Computer and I listened to that quite a bit. And I stayed with them for a long time leading up to the Yorke solo shit. So, to get the call was big.”

LIFE’S BIGGEST QUESTIONS – CRAIG “DOODLEBUG” IRVING

Biggest rule? “The biggest rule would be to stay authentic.”

Biggest regret? “Not being as fiscally responsible when we was first doing our thing.”

Biggest risk? “Being a father.”

LIFE’S BIGGEST QUESTIONS – MARY ANN “LADYBUG MECCA” VIERA

Biggest pursuit? “My biggest pursuit, I would say, is evolving as a human being. Growing.”

Biggest passion? “My passion is definitely art, be it photography or music or dance.”

Biggest purpose? “I think my purpose is to be my true self…Just be an example of my most authentic and unique self. Especially in this day and age. It’s not difficult for me but I think for the youth coming up it can be confusing with what’s around them.”

LIFE’S BIGGEST QUESTIONS – ISHMAEL“BUTTERFLY” BUTLER

Biggest influence? “I have to say the weather, like the atmosphere. That’s why I leave [Seattle] a lot. But even when I’m there, it sets the tone for everything that I end up wanting to do and create. There’s water, trees, mountains, oceans, lakes, all types of air.”

Biggest intention? I think hip-hop captured my imagination, even though I was into music before. It spoke to all the legacy in my chromosomes. From space to Africa. I seem to relate. I liked the competition of it—the undercurrent of boastfulness, but it was always contained in something stylistic. The pursuit of that. Being under pressure to make that happen is something that I pursue. I like that feeling.”

Biggest insecurity?

“I got a lot to choose from. The biggest one? I feel just, like, winding up, in any sense, alone.”

 

Visuals by Tim Blackwell

September 2, 2016

LIFE’S BIGGEST QUESTIONS: CAMP LO

Interview by Rasheed Abdellah
Words by Jay Balfour

On their debut album, Uptown Saturday Night, Camp Lo emcees Sonny Cheeba and Geechi Suede spun their charm into inimitably freewheeling and densely convoluted rhymes. Even a casual listener can shout out the hook to their energetic hit “Luchini,” but it takes a hardcore fan to rap along to more than a line or two of the stream-of-conscious non-sequiturs throughout each verse. “Walk through my heaven,” Geechi raps early on. “With levitation from reefers / Drenching divas in E7 / Showboating with Rugers, flash vines, Belafonte vigor.” Speaking on their latest LP, last year’s Ragtime Hightimes, Sonny cops to an unchanged formula. “I feel like with us, it’s always that ‘do-what-feels-good’ shit,” he says, “never really thinking about time barriers. Just getting in there and doing what feels good.”

Almost 20 years removed from Uptown, the duo remains endearingly out there, popping up recently on the long-in-the-works second album from the Australian electronic outfit The Avalanches. They just wrapped up a summer tour alongside eclectic jazz-rap trio Digable Planets at McMenamin’s Crystal Ballroom in Portland after wowing crowds on both coasts—and in-between—including a triumphant two-night stint at Ardmore Music Hall, on Philly’s suburban outskirts, where we caught up with them.

When they’re off the road, Sonny splits his time between New York, North Carolina and Paris, while Geechi, on the other hand, jokes about his move away from the bustle of the Northeast: “I pressed the eject button, man, went down to the A.” Now that they’re home, the guys have no plans of staying still or jumping on trendy bandwagons. For their next project, they’re digging deeper into fertile creative ground rich with their pre-Uptown Saturday Night inspirations. “We’re coming up on the 20th [anniversary] of Uptown,” Sonny warns. “We’re working on that and some new material … We got the demo—basically the album before the album—so … you could see where cats’ heads was at.”

As Digable Planets preps to continue their roadshow overseas and the Camp Lo gents unpack their bags, Sonny recalls his initial, admittedly-rabid-fan encounter in the Planets’ orbit. Coincidentally, it happened on Camp Lo’s first tour ever—with De La Soul.

“We stopped in Jersey at a gas station and I bent down to tie my shoe and when I came back up, Chee was like, ‘Yo, I think I just saw your boy.’ I was like, ‘Who?’ And he was like, ‘I think I just saw your boy.’ I was like, ‘Who you talking about?’ And then before he could get the ‘fly’ out his mouth, he was like, ‘Butter—’ and I ran out the car, ‘Where? Where?’ He was at his car about to pull off. I was like, ‘Yo, yo!’ This is at a gas station in Jersey. Random. The tour bus stopped at a gas station. He was about to dip. Then he thought niggas was about to stick him up. We ran up on the car real suspect, man. [Laughs] He saw that it was all love. And that’s been the bro ever since.”

LIFE’S BIGGEST QUESTIONS – GEECHI SUEDE
Biggest passion? “I don’t wanna sound so cliche with the music thing, but definitely I feel like that’s what it has been. I feel like it’s even more important that artists like us are putting it out there. It’s needed. We need the D’Angelos and the Maxwells and the Lauryns. We need everybody to come back, put some substance and some diversity back into this shit.”

Biggest pursuit? “Wanting to dive into other forms of art: Film, fashion, music. Definitely … to get some other arts up under my belt.”

Biggest purpose? “Taking the platform we been blessed with and just being inspirational for our generation and generations to come. To continue to push the bar. You can be positive, you can be yourself and be successful. Everybody’s copying each other. Everything revolves around negative stuff and all that.”

LIFE’S BIGGEST QUESTIONS – SONNY CHEEBA
Biggest influence? “Always the force of the ‘70s. The dudes that came before. You always look back and find something new that they ain’t looking at right now.”

Biggest intention? “What’s supposed to be the goal. I guess to not fuck with the status shit, you know what I mean? Mentally, spiritually, whatever. They could have it.”

Biggest insecurity? “To not live forever.”

Visuals By Tim Blackwell