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Jazz

Listen to Soulful and Sophisticated Jamilah Barry (@jamilahbarry)

May 1, 2019 by Nicole Mitchell Leave a Comment

Soulful songstress, Jamilah Barry, has proven sophistication beyond her years. The 22-year-old, hailing from London, has been writing her own music since her early teens and has drawn influence from jazz, soul and R&B. She has been steadily building up a name for herself on SoundCloud and has been acknowledged amongst the UK’s most promising underground singers, rappers and producers. Fans are captivated by her eclectic, yet delicate vocals. Listeners can expect to sit back and listen to her soulful tracks without finding any traces of the singer being over the top or trying too hard. If you enjoy following a story in music, Barry is definitely worth the listen.

 

Filed Under: Amongst The Myriad, Sub Features Tagged With: Dance Moves, Jamilah Barry, Jazz, R&B, Soul

Reachin’ Track by Track

February 21, 2019 by Rob Parkour Leave a Comment

Digable Planets Track by Track
By Rob Parkour

Whether we admit it or not, we all judge things before we actually give them a shot. They
call it “judging a book by its cover.” Our instincts usually don’t fail us because we know what
we like. For example, I’m a reality-based person that doesn’t like fantasy. I see the hype around
Game of Thrones and know it’s not for me (it sucks). Adults flock to the latest Marvel comic
book movie and I know I will hate it. I don’t need to put myself through two hours of Marvel
hell to know this. I see Ali Wong’s face on Netflix and know she isn’t funny. I don’t have to
watch her make Asian jokes to confirm this.
Sometimes our instincts betray us and we write off something due to some association we
have in our minds that may or may not be founded on reality. This was me with the hip-hop trio
Digable Planets. I wrote them off as some type of Pharcyde/Souls of Mischief combination or B-
grade Native Tongues group. I’m not even sure what I based this off of. I knew they weren’t
hardcore NYC rap which is probably where the Native Tongue connection came from and their
trippy look and album cover made me associate them with other artists who seemed to prefer
psychedelics and jazz to Hennessy and mob flicks.
I was very wrong. Digable Planets are not only amazing but are right up my alley. Let’s
unpack the album track by track to figure out why.

“It’s Good to Be Here” – The sample starts off with a spacey 35 second clip of “Rain Dance” by
Herbie Hancock which wouldn’t pass today because people have musical ADD and can’t listen
to a song over 2 minutes, let alone 35 seconds of “nothing.” When the beat drops it’s a laid back,
smooth sample of Grant Green’s “Samba De Orpheus.” The drums used are from our guy Mike
Clark, aka the funkiest WASP of all-time that played drums on Herbie Hancock’s underrated
album Thrust.
Digable Planets is the brainchild of Butterfly (Ishmael Butler). Butterfly grew up in
Seattle during the Sir-Mix-A-Lot days and was weaned on Ice-T and Too $hort during his early
education of hip-hop. Butterfly’s parents were divorced and he spent a lot of time in New York
City with his father during the summer which provided the young aspiring MC/Producer with a
deep palette.
Butterfly received a scholarship to play basketball at UMASS in 1988, the same year
John Calipari started coaching the struggling program. The dates aren’t clear but there is a decent
chance that Butterfly was part of John Calipari’s first recruiting class at UMASS which if you
know me, almost made my head explode. Butterfly eventually dropped out of college and moved
to Brooklyn but had he stayed on for all five years of his eligibility at UMASS. There is a chance
that Butterfly, as a fifth-year Senior, would’ve played with Freshman Marcus Camby. There’s
also a chance that John Calipari is the reason that Butterfly dropped out of college and eventually
made this classic. I need to know these things.

Butterfly eventually met Doodlebug (Craig Irving) on a double date and the two
connected so much that they ended up talking the whole time and ignoring their dates. Butterfly
and Doodlebug complement each other very well, their voices sound similar but not in a generic
way. Ladybug Mecca (Mariana Vieira) is the third member and has one of the most unique
voices in hip-hop history. She raps smoother than a baby’s bottom and does not sound out of
place or over her head rapping alongside two stellar MC’s. It‘s easy to forget that hip-hop, like
sports, is a team effort. The sweet spot of rap occurs at the intersection of collaboration and
competition: that’s when the magic happens.
With emailing verses and how easy it is to record, hip-hop has lost that joint effort feeling
in the last two decades. This wasn’t the case in the early 90’s. The group took a dollar bus from
Brooklyn to Montclair, New Jersey at sunrise and wouldn’t come back until after sunset. The
three members spent over 12 hours in the studio every day bouncing ideas off each other and
trying to outdo one another. The result is the sum of the parts being greater than the whole. Being
in sync and on the same wavelength with one another pushes the album to a different level.
You’ve probably noticed that all the members are named after insects. It’s part of the
communal living/daisy age thing they were going for. Or it could be that they were doing lots of
psychedelics at the time. There is a “Cocoon Club” skit at the end that more or less lets you
know that the group is indeed dropping doses of LSD.

“Pacifics (Soundtrack to NY is Red Hot)” – Before Digable Planets, there were groups that
used and made references to jazz like De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest. Guru and DJ
Premier’s early Gang Starr albums also leaned on the jazz sound, but nobody and I mean nobody
in hip-hop loves jazz more than Butterfly. Like the “jazz-hop” artists before him he relies on
samples. The Lonnie Smith sample on this track is a stroke of genius. What separates Butterfly
is all the references he makes to jazz giants of yesteryear, he shouts them out
like Cam’ron shouts out Rich Porter.
In this song Butterfly starts off the song by “pulling from the jazz stacks cuz it’s Sunday”
and wondering what John Coltrane would say of the times. He continues to take us on a vivid
walk down the street in the West Indian section of Brooklyn on a hot, summer day. “But early
birds like me up checking out the scene/The early worms jog, forget about your job/Just come
dig the essence while the decadence is hidden” Butterly uses Greek Mythology to describe how
New York changes on the day of sabbath. “If you know the norm, (Sunday) is like Hades
transformed.”
After Doodlebug’s strong verse sets the scene, the three members go bar for bar with one
another, each only taking one line at a time. It’s here that you notice how remarkable their
chemistry truly is: it shouldn’t be possible to have 16 MC changes in one 16 bar verse but
Digable Planets pull it off in style. It’s like listening to a three-man weave.
Butterfly’s second solo verse on this song is an all-timer that starts with the opening two
lines: “Wake up, praying that the game’s on/maybe it’s the Runnin’ Rebs, maybe it’s The

Knicks.” There aren’t many sports references on this album but referring to Larry Johnson’s
UNLV and Pat Riley’s Knicks in one line makes up for it.
Butterfly continues his name checking fest by bringing up Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert
Camus: the latter made my eyes pop out when I first heard it. I’m sure he was the only rapper at
that point to name check Albert Camus. The very next line “Mingus’ Ah Um, damn Roach can
drum” references one of the best jazz albums and drummers of all time.

“Where I’m From” – The group takes a break from the jazz samples and uses KC & The
Sunshine Band’s song “Ain’t Nothin’ Wrong” to structure the beat around the song’s undeniable
horns. They used a jazz sample for the remix but the original is the superior version.
Each member of Digable Planets hails from a different area, giving the group a sound that
can’t be pinned down to a specific region. We discussed Butterfly’s Seattle/New York City roots.
Ladybug is from the DMV area, Maryland specifically. Doodlebug is from Philadelphia and the
son of a Black Panther History Professor who was obsessed with Jazz. His father was “around
people (Black Panthers and gangsters) that were in the street but who were down with
communist principles.” And I was just about to say Doodlebug’s father sounded like a great guy
to hang out with!
Jazz records weren’t the only thing Doodlebug and Butterfly had in common: they were
(are?) both socialists. In the previous song, Doodlebug talks about reading Erich Fromm right
before bringing up Camus. In this song Doodlebug has a line saying “We be reading Marx where
I’m from/The kids wear Clarks where I’m from.” Really, Doodlebug? What kid in the hood
is rockin’ Wallabee’s while reading fuckin’ Karl Marx? Go to China or North Korea with that
shit. I’m sure the Digable Planets don’t mind our capitalistic society when they cash their royalty
checks they rightfully deserve.

“What Cool Breezes Do” – Ladybug has the last verse on the previous song and the first song
on this one. She is a refreshing change-up to the similar sounding voices of Doodlebug and
Butterfly. Ladybug is far from a pushover but doesn’t sound unnecessarily aggressive. She has
remarkable control with her flow and always sounds confident in her abilities. It doesn’t matter
the tempo of the beat, her style is agile and nimble and can contort to whatever the beat is doing:
her timing is perfect and that of a ten-year veteran. An under-discussed part of rapping is the
little half second pauses rappers give before or during a bar: there’s no manual for how to do it,
you either have the rhythm for it or you don’t. Ladybug has this skill in spades: “Mecca, the
ladybug, changin’ like seasons/Moves I be seein, changin’ life’s reasons.”
Why doesn’t Ladybug get mentioned when people bring up the greatest female MC
debate? MC Lyte is my favorite female MC of all time but I can see why some would give
Queen Latifah that crown. Foxy Brown, Lil’ Kim and Eve are each talented but were propped up
by being in advantageous situations, their degree of difficulty was relatively low. Bahamadia and

Lauryn Hill are the backpack rapper’s answer to best female MC but listening Bahamadia isn’t
exactly fun. Lauryn Hill is smart, a legend, a Queen blah blah blah but I just don’t have the
desire to revisit her one solo album or the Fugees: I played them out. Monie Love is from
London so she’s disqualified. Roxanne Shante and Yo-Yo were important but not even the best
females out at the time. Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes is the coolest and prettiest of the bunch but I
consider TLC more R&B than rap. Salt n Pepa and Da Brat crossed over to big success but
objectively can’t rap as well as Remy Ma or Rah Digga. I grew up listening to Missy Elliot on
95.5 the Beat in Atlanta and I respect her skills as an MC but there’s always been something
holding me back from considering her in that true MC light: it’s the price she pays for making
catchy radio singles. I was about to bring up Mia X and Gangsta Boo but you get the point. After
you take MC Lyte and Queen Latifah out of the equation for respect, you can make a very strong
argument that Ladybug is the best female rapper ever. Doesn’t seem right to give that label
to someone who was one third of a group that released two albums and never released a solo
album until a decade after her prime.
That only leaves one female rapper eligible for the throne. Wait…is that “Afro Puffs” I
hear coming from a distance? Lady of Rage, come on down! Laugh all you want but Lady of
Rage is the hardest female rapper of all time, that is not up for debate. Her guest verses
on Doggystyle and The Chronic account for probably half of the greatest female verses of all
time. I’m very confident that had her album been released after Doggystyle and produced by Dr.
Dre like “Afro Puffs” was, then Lady of Rage would’ve have made the best female rap album of
all-time. Her album coming five years after her initial buzz is a textbook example of what
happens when you wait and don’t strike while the iron is hot. Waiting until Death Row was
burning to the ground in 1997 to release Lady of Rage’s debut is like if 50 Cent would’ve waited
until post-Curtis in 2007 to release Lloyd Banks’ solo debut. My Mount Rushmore of Female
MC’s: MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, Ladybug and Lady of Rage. Amil is definitely in Jay-Z’s female
Mount Rushmore.
The sample on this beat comes from a killer saxophone riff off “Superfluous” by
Eddie Harris. The beat also has a psychedelic haze to it. I say Doodlebug and Butterfly sound
similar and are close in skills but there’s songs like this where the difference is more
pronounced. Doodlebug mails in a verse and Butterfly come in with a laser focus. “Expressions,
sightings, scripting, taught/Finest status quo is being an artist in New York/Tongues be often
fought, clothes be often caught/If they call it a fad, we just ignore it, like its pork.” Butterfly has
a knack for taking common sayings and expressions and using them as a jump off point for an
interesting few bars: “They said the grass was greener so we snuck and hopped the fence/Landed
in a meadow, glimpsed and saw a shadow/Of brothers with guitars, common sense and puffy
afros.” How he goes from the starting point of those three bars to the end is magnificent.

“Time & Space (A New Refutation) – The album’s title is a reference to an essay by
Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges. The “Reachin’” part pays homeage to the old Jazz albums
such as Art Blakey‘s Cookin and Miles Davis’ Smokin’, Walkin’, Relaxin’, Workin’ albums I
praised in my Jazz piece. They should’ve just titled the album Reachin’ but the trio has a

tendency for doing a little too much. They really wanted us to know they were into the whole
“space and time are conceptual and don’t actually exist” thing. Cool.
All the beats on the album are done by Butterfly who had the music pretty much set for
the debut, while their follow-up was more of a collaborative effort. This beat samples “Mamba
Bounce” by Sonny Rollins. The beat follows the album’s blueprint of chill, laidback beats you
can nod your head to. When someone says about a project “all the beats sound the same” we
think of that as a bad thing but here it is actually a good thing. The formula works for them so
there’s no reason to deviate from it. Sure, the beats are jazzy, but there’s enough funk in there to
make them pop. The three MC’s aren’t in a rush to get their rhymes off, they let the smooth beat
come to them which relaxes the listeners and puts them at ease.
There is a line referring to the late, great comedian Sam Kinison. Netflix recently added
his specials to streaming and I watched them for the first time and was amazed by how funny he
was and that I’d never seen a special of his before. Why had I seen all of Bill Hick’s stuff but
none of Sam Kinison’s? Call me stupid but when I hear Digable Planets namedrop
Sam Kinison it made me feel like there is larger things at play, too much of a coincidence, right?

“Psych-e-delic and fat/Flowers and beads and peaces and naps.” The peace-loving, hippy
Digable Planets are getting trippier by the track. The ending line is the best. “Ah yes, planets got
the blessed/Beats are played on Friday to get Monday off your chest.”

“Rebirth (Cook Like Dat)” – One of the most recognizable singles in the history of rap. This
single is to the Digable Planets what “The Choice is Yours” is to Black Sheep. Instead of being
cheapened by a rapping hamsters in a Kia commercial, this song gets cheapened by being
included in “Master of None” a series by Aziz Ansari who is not funny. There’s something
about Aziz Ansari thinking this song is “accessible yet cool” that really pisses me off.
This beat is actually from the group Dread Poets Society, a group Doodlebug was a
member of before joining Digable Planets. Side note: Dread Poets Society is an extremely corny
yet predictable name for a late 80’s/early 90’s rap group. Doodlebug’s former group didn’t care
that he wanted to use the track for his new group.
The sample is a monster, it’s taken from Art Blakey and the Jazz
Messengers’ “Stretchin.” The group gives the common line that they didn’t know they had a hit
and didn’t feel one way or another when the label chose the song as the first single. Usually, I
would call BS on that but in this particular case I believe them because this song doesn’t stand
out in comparison to the rest of the album. No doubt it’s a great song that deserves its elevated
status in the rap singles cannon, but at the same time, you could argue there’s six or seven songs
better than “Rebirth” on the album. Someone who woke up from a 26-year coma wouldn’t hear
this and be like oh, that’s a hit. The bass line (from the same Art Blakey song) must have
resonated deeply with listeners.

There are always larger factors at play when it comes to why singles get heavy airplay.
Rosie Perez chose the song for an episode of In Living Color and the group flew to LA in
January 1993 to record the episode. After the episode aired, the sales for the single went through
the roof and the radio started playing the song non-stop. The group’s album came out a month
later and the rest is history.
The group beat out Naughty by Nature, Arrested Development, Dre & Snoop, and
Cypress Hill to win the 1994 Grammy Award for best performance by a duo or group. The
decision caused some controversy at the time. KRS-One (surprise, surprise) was upset Digable
Planets won the award. Granted the Grammys was more reputable back then but why choose a
Grammy to get upset over? The wack part is I’m sure KRS would have been fine with Arrested
Development, who aren’t in the same league as Digable Planets, winning the award. Cypress Hill
is lame and I’m sure the whole country didn’t want to see them win. Naughty by Nature had an
argument for the best single but the song is so reliant on an Isley Brothers sample like Biggie’s
“Big Poppa” (released the following year). “Nothin’ But a G Thang” should’ve won the award
and is the best and most iconic song out of the bunch but Dre and Snoop losing is not a travesty.
Want to see a travesty? Look at the list of singles that were up for this same award the previous
year:
Beastie Boys: “Check Your Head”
House of Pain: “Jump Around” (Every Celtics fan favorite song)
Kris Kross: “Jump”
Arrested Development: “Tennessee” (won)
Digable Planets thought a song called “Brown Baby Funk” was going to be the single but
the song didn’t even make the album. The song sampled George Duke and he wanted a crazy
amount of money for the clearance so they just left it off. This reminded me of “Hard Like A
Criminal” being one of Das Efx’s best songs but being mysteriously left off of the duo’s
debut Dead Serious. At least “Hard Like A Criminal” exists on the internet, “Brown Baby Funk”
is nowhere to be found, release the track Butterfly, Loose Tracks Matter!
I saw this single referred to as a one-hit wonder. By definition that may be true, but when
I think of one-hit wonders I think of Vanilla Ice and J-Kwon, rappers who used a gimmick for
their single to become famous. There’s nothing gimmicky about Digable Planets and if you
release a classic album that plays all the way through you should not be considered a one-hit
wonder, that should be reserved for rappers that have albums with a popular single and filler
tracks no one wants to listen to. This is probably my nostalgia talking but my favorite rap one-hit
wonder is Cool Breeze’s “Watch for The Hook”.

“Last of the Spiddyocks” – The group avoids the common mistake of following their hit single
with a bland, low-tempo album cut. This track keeps the energy going high after the single. This

is actually the second Digable Planets song I ever heard. I’m embarrassed to say this now but for
a long time I was a fan of “Rebirth” even though I hadn’t heard any of their other songs. When I
bartended in Jersey City, I made a mix of golden age era rap songs that were classic but also
appropriate enough to play for hipsters who paid $9 for an IPA. Under those guidelines,
“Rebirth” was perfect, it was catchy and sure to not offend anyone. “The group is
too hipstery or backpacky to dig into further” I told myself which prevented me from digging
further into the group. Well one night in December, I had an urge to play “Rebirth” and I
couldn’t find the playlist I made so I just went directly to the album and played “Rebirth” while I
smoked out of my gravity bong. I was high so of course I forgot to change the album once the
song was over. This song came on and I found myself really digging it, something about it
happening unconsciously made it feel extra special. “Are all these songs this good?!” I asked
myself and spent the next week listening to the album over and over and wondering why I hadn’t
given the album a shot earlier.
Like I said earlier, there were rap groups by De La Soul and Tribe that were jazz
sounding but rarely did they ever name drop any jazz artists in their tracks. My jaw kept
dropping lower and lower after every Jazz reference in this song. “These guys love the same
guys I do!” I said excitingly to myself. When Butterfly rapped “I felt like Bird Parker when I
shot it in my vein/I toss these major losses on Mingus jazzy strum,” I felt a shot of adrenaline
going through my body. “This guy gets me” I thought in my head. Butterfly wished he was from
an earlier era like me. Butterfly goes on to mourn the loss of Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie and
Hank Mobley, as well as giving a shout out to The Cooker album by Lee Morgan which is very
underrated.
It’s not just the guys, Ladybug drops a bunch of jazz gems in her verse. “Dolphy’s
archetype for cool dudes/Or better still Trane usin’ Afro Blue.” That’s a great line but her best
jazz line of the album is, “My baby loves to kiss when Ornette just lays out.” Amazing. Dear
lord, please bless me with a woman who wants to hook up to Ornette Coleman! She also makes
a references to Thelonious Monk, Max Roach and (personal favorite) Philly Joe Jones. I
wouldn’t even know where to start looking if I wanted to find a woman that really knows old
school jazz. What up tho, Ladybug?
According to Butterfly, the term Spiddyock came from his dad’s era and was used to
describe a real jazzhead person: “You dressed a certain way and listened to a certain type of
music. It was just a type of socialite.” So Spiddyock’s were basically the coolest guys in the
world? I am leading a one-man charge to bring Spiddyock’s back into American vernacular and
will hereby refer to myself as a Spiddyock.
Butterfly’s father also had jazz connections. In Living Color took the group to another
level of game but it was the jazz clubs (remember those?) like Giant Step that played the group’s
records and provided them with the street buzz necessary to end up on the radar of TV shows and
radio stations. Butterfly’s father would visit the group in the studio and bring in famous jazz cats
who would sit, listen and chop it up with the trio. I wonder what Tekashi69’s favorite jazz
musician is.

“Jimmi Diggin’ Cats” – Butterfly: “Yo, everybody’s goin retro, right? And I was thinking if the
60’s and 70’s were now. Isaac Hayes would have his own 900 number.”
Mecca: “I know, and MC Hammer woulda been a pimp, right?”
Butterfly: “Word, and Jimmi woulda dug us right?”
The acid has officially been dropped, I repeat the acid has officially been dropped!
Instead of pining to live in a previous generation, the group imagines what icons of the 60’s and
70’s would do now if they were around in the early 90’s hip-hop climate. The Isaac Hayes line
isn’t funny but foreshadows Hayes becoming the voice actor for Chef on South Park. The MC
Hammer line is not only low-hanging fruit but doesn’t make sense. The logic is supposed to be
MC Hammer is a radio sellout that gets pimped out to do KFC and Taco Bell commercials. So
why would he be the one doing the pimping? Plus, MC Hammer is the only artist mentioned
from the current era, how does he apply? Also, why assume Jimi Hendrix would like Digable
Planets or any rap for that matter? Hendrix was a student of southern blues and a big Bob Dylan
fan, it’s presumptuous to assume he would like rap. Jim Morrison may not look like he’d be a rap
fan, but he had the soul of an MC more than Jimi Hendrix did. I’m sure Jim Morrison rolled over
in his grave when he heard “Five to One” being sampled for “Takeover”.
The song uses “Summer Madness” by the Kool & The Gang for the eighth great beat in a
row. The group’s sound is so smooth, all three rappers know this and are careful not to overstep
boundaries and bring an energy that is too hyped. Don’t get it twisted, the group is not boring.
They are smart, know their lane and are masters of their craft. The group fully understands the
concept of an album, how a concept is supposed to prevail through a project and how one track is
supposed to seamlessly lead into the next.
The group is really obsessed with Jimi Hendrix. They couldn’t clear the sample to use his
actual voice and it sounds like they used an actor pretending to be Jimi Hendrix. The fake Jimi
Hendrix applauds Digable Planets for being groovy cats and paying respect to the masters. More
outtakes from their LSD-fueled rant on retro icons being around in the early 90’s:
Butterfly: Yo The Black Panthers woulda had their own cartoon, right?
Ladybug: I know and 8-track Walkmans, right?
Doodlebug: True, The Jackson Five would’ve had dreads
Ladybug: Word my man Tito would look fly right?
Butterfly: Word and Jimmi would’ve dug Dig Planets forreal, word.

The Black Panthers would’ve made a great cartoon? Are you serious? Sounds like the
most depressing cartoon of all time.

Black mom in 1969: Son, tell me what happened in “Super Panthers” this week
Black child in 1969: Mommy, Huey Newton got arrested and charged with killing a police
officer and then Edgar Hoover said the Super Panthers are the greatest threat to the country!
Black mom in 1969: That’s just fine, Sonny. Now tell me what’s next week’s show going to be
about.
Black child in 1969: The Chicago police kill Fred Hampton while he sleeps next to his pregnant
fiancé!
8-Track Walkman line didn’t age well but makes more sense than a Black Panthers
cartoon. I’m almost positive Joe Jackson would not have let his sons wear dreads had the
Jackson 5 been around in 1991. I am even more positive that there is no situation where Tito
Jackson could look fly.

“La Femme Fatal” – The group finally crossed the limits and are too conscious on this song. I
should say Butterfly crosses the line because he is the only one on the song. He isn’t rapping on
the song: the track is an homage to the spoken word artists of yesteryear like Gil Scott-Heron and
our guy Lightning Rod. The track is Doodlebug doing a bad impression of The Last Poets. The
song messes up the flow of the album and has the most underwhelming beat on the project.
Butterfly is obviously a very smart dude but comes across as a 90’s version of someone
who has recently seen a bunch of Illuminati videos on YouTube. Which makes sense considering
he was in his mid 20’s at the time which is the perfect age to get into that stuff. The whole song
is one long pro-life argument: considering there’s a female in the group it’s a strange corner
for Butterfly to own. Butterfly points out the hypocrisy of men making the abortion laws but fails
to realize the irony of him (a man) saying that. Sure, have an opinion but why make a song about
a situation that would never happen to you? “They don’t really give a damn about life/They
just don‘t want a woman to control her body/or have the right to choose.”

“Escapism (Gettin’ Free)” – The song and beat gets my award for “song that bumps the most
in the car.” The beat has bounce to it without sounding heavy. More than any other track on this
album, the beat makes you want to get up and start doing the Deion Sanders touchdown dance.
The beat speeds up the drums from “Lillies of the Nile” by The Crusaders and takes the
often sampled “Watermelon Man” by Herbie Hancock and puts it on steroids. It’s just a fun
sounding beat that you never tire of listening to. All the members sound great over it, especially
Ladybug who gets busy in a span of 8 bars. Ladybug pays homage to the God MC by lifting the
“I came in the door, I said it before” from Eric B. & Rakim’s “Eric B for President.”

“Appointment at the Fat Clinic” – Who’s ready for more communist raps?! Butterfly’s first
verse ruins multiple great jazz lines by referring to his dad’s friends as “Chairman Mao’s
Comrades.” In Butterfly’s closing 8 bar verse he invites the listener to “read a little Marx.” How
many copies of the Communist Manifesto do you think Butterfly owns?
Ladybug comes on the track and gives us 8 solid bars before leading the way for
Doodlebug to give us a spoken word verse on the current state of jazz. As a self-appointed
“spiddyock,” I literally have no idea what the hell he is talking about here:
“Jazz, in the last 5 years has progressed in its fits
And starts of sudden discoveries and startled reactions.
New principles, new sounds
New rhythms and harmonies have been advanced with unusual frequency
Not surprisingly, many of the younger musicians have been quietly digesting
This information almost as quickly as it has appeared
As a result, they’ve acquired a degree of
Musical sophistication which supersedes many of the previous standards of excellence
So it’s no longer especially relevant to ask the young saxophone player
For example, to demonstrate his ability by running through all the Charlie Parker licks”
The acid must really be hitting if Doodlebug thinks jazz progressed from 1987-1992.
New principles, sounds, rhythms and harmonies have been advanced?! Please Doodlebug, tell
me what early 90’s jazz masterpieces have I been missing out on. Matter of fact, just name one
jazz album from that stretch that is on par with the classics. Doodlebug telling young saxophone
players to steer clear of proving yourself by playing the Godfather of the Saxophone’s licks is
hilarious and dumb.

“Nickel Bags” – Butterfly’s Ice-T influence is evident here as he uses music as a metaphor for
selling drugs. Selling “Nickel bags of funk” is similar to Ice-T on his hit single “I’m Your
Pusher.” “Nickel Bags” was the group’s second single from the album and unlike “I’m Your
Pusher” the single cover doesn’t feature Darlene Ortiz in a dental floss bikini. I had no idea this
song was a single until I did my research, there was nothing about the song that struck me as
mainstream or radio friendly. At this point in the album, there are no surprises. You’re getting
the same formula: three MC’s with buttery flows over a laid back, smooth jazz sample. This is
not meant as a knock, it’s an accomplishment to be able to stick to the same formula song after

song and the listener not only doesn’t tire of it but keeps coming back for more. Of all the
albums I’ve reviewed, this one took me the longest to get tired of. Part of that is because I had no
previous relationship to the album but the point remains: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Alas, Digable Planets couldn’t resist fixing their perfect formula. The group ended up
overthinking it and became more conscious and backpack rapper-y on their follow-up
album Blowout Comb. The group abandoned their radio-friendly style for a stripped down sound
inspired by albums the group listened to while on their world tour. I respect what they were
trying to do but sometimes an artist bites off more than they can chew. I’m all for artists
progressing and trying new things. Miles Davis is my favorite musical artist and he’s the king of
innovation and creating new styles. I get what they were trying to do but for me it just didn’t
work. I’ve only listened to the album once so I can’t have any concrete takes on it but one thing I
know is the first time I listened to Reachin’ from start to finish I was blown away and couldn’t
wait to listen to it more and lose myself in that world. I had no such desires after listening
to Blowout Comb, there are some solid tracks and some of the sounds are interesting but
personally it doesn’t come close to grabbing me by the collar which is what I want music to do:
good music is supposed to garner a reaction out of you and Blowout Comb left me dry after the
first spin. For what it’s worth, Blowout Comb is critically more successful than Reachin’ but that
strikes me as a case of music journalists trying to sound smart by appreciating something more
musically abstract. Put those loser music journalists on truth serum and I bet they don’t actually
like Blowout Comb more. At the very least, Reachin’ is much more re-listenable.

“Swoon Units” – One final banger for the album. The track takes the Saxophone from Earth,
Wind & Fire’s “They Don’t See” and marries it with Gylan Kain’s “Black Satin Amazon Fire
Engine Cry Baby” to make for an unlikely yet strong couple.
Butterfly got the saying “Swoon Units” from women he worked with in a kitchen at
Reading Terminal (yikes) and every time a good-looking guy would pass by they would yell
“Swoon Units!” Butterfly and Doodlebug adopted the saying and would use it for hot girls they
passed in the street. Butterfly has two very strong verses but Doodlebug’s 8 bar verse steals the
show: he hovers over the beat as the verse ends, right when you’re gearing up for more.
Ladybug is saying “Swoon Units!” on the hook but doesn’t have a verse on the song.
Prior to joining Digable Planets, Ladybug and Doodlebug were a couple. According to
Doodlebug in Brian Coleman’s book Check the Technique they “remained friends but decided to
not go out. That was one of the smartest things we ever did, considering how popular we got. If
we hadn’t done that, we would have hated each other!” Translation: if had we stayed a couple I
would have cheated on her as soon as we got famous and she would’ve hated me and that
would’ve broken up the group. When I found this out, I was fascinated by their dynamic. In the
beginning, did they continue to occasionally hook up on lonely nights on the road? Did Ladybug
secretly resent all the female groupies that were after Doodlebug? When they were a couple,
would their pillow talk be exchanging bars? Did Butterfly ever get caught in the middle of a
domestic dispute? Can a dope 16 turn somebody on? Were Ladybug and Doodlebug
rap’s Nomar Garciaparra and Mia Hamm? There’s lot of questions I need answers for. I can’t

remember a situation where a female and male MC in the same group dated. Usually it’s a
Biggie/Lil’ Kim situation where the male rapper’s elevated status gives him the upper hand.
Here, it’s different because Ladybug and Doodlebug are on a similar playing field as far as MC
skills go. Don’t be surprised if I write a fictional TV show about a hip-hop couple based off my
weird fascination with Ladybug and Doodlebug going out.

“Examinatin of What” – The album’s last track starts with:
“One day while I was sipping some groove juice I realized/That in the span of time we’re just
babies…It’s all relative, time is unreal…we’re just babies, we’re just babies, man…”
The acid is officially peaking. I repeat the acid is officially peaking! If you weren’t
convinced the group was doing LSD before, that intro will convince you. If that isn’t enough,
Butterfly’s last “verse” will:
“Cause Butterfly is…baby, I’m just a baby, man
I’m a baby, I’m just a baby, man
And Mr. Doodle? (I’m just a baby too)
And Miss Mecca (I’m just a baby, man)”
Butterfly goes on to shout everyone out and call them all babies because thinking time is
unreal and adults are babies are thoughts that occur when you’re knee deep in an acid trip. All
jokes aside, the beat for this song is really simple but really good. The instrumental consists of
only The Crusaders’ song “Listen and You’ll See” sped way up. The keyboards on the track fit
perfect with the rhyming patters of Butterfly. The group and this album were born from Butterfly
so it makes sense and is fair that he has three verses on the last song on the album. Well, the last
verse isn’t actually a verse, it’s just him calling everyone he knows a baby because he’s high out
of his mind and can’t come up with anymore rhymes. The first two verses are two of the stronger
of the albums. On the first verse: “Life, it comes and goes and you do not punch a clock/I don’t
take shit for granted, I think of Scott La Rock.” On Butterfly’s second verse we get one last jazz
reference: “My father taught me jazz, all the people and the anthems/Ate peanuts with
the Diz and vibed with Lionel Hampton.” Can you imagine being in a smokey jazz club,
throwing peanut shells on the ground and chopping it up with Dizzy Gillespie?
Ladybug commits a party foul in her two-line spoken word part: “What is really what if I
can’t get comfortable because the Supreme Court is like, all up in my uterus.” Whoa! Holy
imagery Ladybug, chill out! Could you think of a more tactful way to let me know where you
stand on Abortion Rights? The Digable Planets are obsessed with: Communism, jazz and being
pro-choice!
The woke-ness and missteps are few and far between on this classic. Reachin’ is a top 50
rap album of all-time. It’s been awhile since I’ve listened to 3 Feet High and Rising and the first
three Tribe albums but based off memories this is right there with all four of those albums. It’s a
step above Black Sheep but not quite on the level of A Trible Called Quest at their absolute apex.

Before we leave, let’s see how Reachin’ stacks up against other rap albums released in 1993, one
of the best years in rap history.

Albums released in 1993 that are better than Reachin’:
Snoop Dogg – Doggystyle
Wu-Tang Clan- Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
2Pac – Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.

Albums released in 1993 on the same level as Reachin’:
A Tribe Called Quest – Midnight Marauders
Black Moon – Enta Da Stage
Oynx – Bacdafucup

Albums released in 1993 that are one level below Reachin’:
KRS-One – Return of the Boom Bap
Lords of the Underground – Here Come the Lords
8Ball and MJG – Comin’ Out Hard
De La Soul – Buhloone Mindstate
Freestyle Fellowship – Innercity Griots
Naughty by Nature – 19 Naughty III
Brand Nubian – In God We Trust
Eazy-E – It’s On (Dr. Dre) 187um Killa
Masta Ace – Slaughtahouse

Albums from 1993 that are good and deserve mention:
Spice 1 – 187 He Wrote
Tha Alkaholiks – 21 & Over
Del the Funky Homosapien – No Need for Alarm
The Roots – Organix
Too $hort – Get In Where You Fit In
Big Daddy Kane – Looks Like A Job For…
Fat Joe – Repersent
King Tee – Tha Trifilin’ Album
E-40 – Federal
Mac Dre – Young Black Brotha
Mobb Deep – Juvenile Hell
Queen Latifah – Black Reign

Filed Under: Featured, Reviews, Sub Features Tagged With: 90's Hip-Hop, Butterfly, Digable Planets, Doodlebug, East Coast Hip-Hop, Golden Age Hip-Hop, Jazz, Jazz-Hop, Ladybug Mecca, Reachin'

How I Discovered How to Listen to Jazz

November 16, 2018 by Rob Parkour 1 Comment

How I Discovered How to Listen to Jazz

By Rob Parkour

 

 

            On a beautiful afternoon during the summer of 2015, I drove to my best friend Sam’s house in North Plainfield to trip on LSD. For me, the trip was a comeback of sorts. Tripping on various psychedelics was a weekend tradition with my group of friends in High School. We’d wear old sports jerseys, smoke, listen to trippy music, and laugh. Our tripping golden era was during 2004-2005, my junior year of high school. As our weed smoking increased, our psychedelic trips became so infrequent that we had only one trip during the second semester of senior year: that trip was the last time I tripped on any type of drugs until that day.

Okay, that’s a lie. Three months earlier, my backup weed connect told me he could get his hands on some acid. Sam and I took four tabs each, and watched the complete first season of the hood web series Money & Violence, which is like The Wire if you took out the politics, actors, and budget. It was Sam’s first time seeing the show, and my second: doing something as ridiculous as tripping LSD to a hood YouTube series was an on brand way for us to reintroduce ourselves to the tripping game.

We huddle around Sam’s laptop and are transported into the world of Flatbush Brooklyn, where everyone either wears a Yankees World Series Patch fitted or a Brooklyn Nets snapback.  I know Sam’s under the influence when he starts comparing Money & Violence plots to Shakespeare multiple times during the same episode.

You know how people say everything under the sun has been said or done? I can safely say Sam and I are the only people to trip acid to the complete first season of Money & Violence. That just gave me a great idea. You know those Ayahuasca trips people take in the wilderness where they trip so hard that they confront demons and come back new people? Well think about that concept and apply it to Money & Violence. Fill up a van of 10 brave souls, go into the deepest parts of the woods, meditate, take a sheet of acid, and completely give yourself up to the genius that is the first season of Money & Violence.  After the trip is complete, Sam will lead a group discussion centered around comparing Shane and Tai’s story arc to Hamlet.

As fun as that trip was, the acid wasn’t the strongest.  I was definitely tripping and experienced feelings that I wouldn’t have otherwise felt, but I was still very much in control of myself and experienced minimal visual distortion of colors or shapes. The Money & Violence trip was equivalent to getting very buzzed off five beers, and knowing there’s still another level to reach if you want to get drunk.

When I get to Sam’s I unload my backpack which has my Xbox 360 and Bose Bluetooth stereo.  At the round table we both set up shop in our personal GB stations and chop it up while listening to rap.  The acid that I’m given is not from the same person as last time, this time the person purchased the acid at one of those Jam Band music festivals where the acid is so strong it makes wannabe Phish groups sound bearable.

“Should I take one or two?” I ask Sam who gives me a look that said ten years ago you never would’ve asked that question. I take two tabs, and less than an hour later I scratch my leg. When I bring my head back up a wave comes over my body intensely. All of a sudden things are brighter and I can’t stop smiling. My cheekbones are starting to feel sore because I can’t stop cheesing so hard.  Sam looks at me and can tell the LSD dropped, he is sitting this trip out and being my trip advisor instead of my tripping partner.  His early 80’s music fetish aside, Sam has the best taste of music out of anyone I know and there’s no one else I’d trust more to curate the music for my trip. Sam turns on YouTube on his SmartTV and plays Afrobeat Godfather, Fela Kuti. Coming up on acid and watching Fela’s sets was an out of body experience similar to discovering masturbation. During hour 2 of our Fela experience, YouTube was experiencing buffering issues that couldn’t be solved but luckily Sam had a laptop full of downloaded music that needed no internet to listen to.

“What are you in the mood to listen to?”  Sam asked as he lorded over his MacBook that contained his music library.

“No rock but no rap either.  Need something with real instruments that has rhythm to it.”  Eventually we landed on Jazz.

“Have you ever listened to Thurst by Herbie Hancock?”  Sam asked while he scanned his iTunes.

“Nope, only Headhunters.”  I responded, referring to Herbie Hancock’s most popular album. Sam pressed play, Mike Clark’s drums came on, and my life was changed forever.

Before we dive into Thrust, let me explain my personal history with Jazz.  In elementary school, I owned a very small collection of cassettes and CD’s, none of which were Jazz.  They mostly consisted of The Beach Boys, Elvis, The Beatles and Jock Jams.  I moved to Georgia in 1999 during Ludacris’ and OutKast’s heyday which I got swept under: The Beat 95.5 FM gave me my (mostly southern) base education in Hip-Hop.  The same year my family bought a CD stereo for the living room, and I even got a little Sony Jukebox for my bedroom. I took two CD’s out of my parents hard Red CD case, one was a Doo-Wop mix that you may see on TV, and the other was Jazz music from the Big Band era.  Don’t ask me why, but listening to Big Band Era Jazz was my hype music to listen to before a baseball game.  The music was from another era and had a certain level of class to it which made me feel like a grown-up listening to it.   A couple years later I made my stereotypical first Jazz purchase, Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue.  I moved to New Jersey and got really into buying CD’s at Borders with my friends. I wasn’t consciously buying Wilco albums over Jazz albums but that’s what I was doing. Throughout all those trips to Borders I only remember buying three Jazz CD’s, Getz/Gilberto’s self-titled album, John Coltrane’s Giant Steps, and A Love Supreme.  There were so many other genres and unknown artists for me to discover that it didn’t occur to me to go further down the road with jazz.  At this point of my life I used jazz as a nice change up to the rock and rap I loved, putting it on as background music as I messaged my friends on AIM talking about our crazy trips.  During high school, I listened to more soul and standards which left jazz as a distant fifth place.

In my early 20’s I would put on jazz playlists on Songza and use it as background music as I wrote.  Of course, now I know this isn’t the way to listen to jazz, but at the time I was uneducated and liked the vibe it gave me as I wrote.  It’s curious that I didn’t go down a jazz rabbit hole at some point. With rock and rap especially, I took great pleasure in going into the deep recesses of the genres and finding diamonds in the ruff. I think there being no vocals subconsciously made me look at it different.  During this time, I got further into John Coltrane and Miles Davis, familiarizing myself with their five best albums but I was slow to give other artists a shot.  Charlie Parker was the only other Jazz musician whose discography I sought out but that was easy because his entire recordings are in like two places.  I would listen to Headhunters by Herbie Hancock only because I was aware of how it’s been sampled so many times in hip-hop.  I liked Jazz in the same way someone “likes” football but only tunes in during the playoffs.

“Holy shit this is incredible, what the fuck is this?!”

“Thrust. Jazz-funk, really good isn’t it?”  Sam can tell my answer by my eyes bugging out at Mike Clark’s drums, Paul Jackson’s bass and Herbie Hancock’s Piano melts my face off.

“This is fuckin amazing too!” I yell at Sam as the next track “Actual Proof” somehow eclipses “Palm Grease”

“Word big guy, one after another on this album.  All the songs are great,” Sam says as he chuckles.  I keep repeating to Sam how good the album is as if the album will stop playing if I stop complimenting it.  Sam’s vigorously researching online, but from my GB station at the round table I can’t tell if he’s looking up more jazz albums or deciding what food to have delivered at 3 in the afternoon.

It turns out both. 30 minutes later he changes the album, and ten minutes after that Sam’s sister comes down the basement stairs holding food, really making it feel like 2004. They ask if I want any food.

A few quick notes on Thrust before we move on.  Thrust is a better album than Headhunters.  It’s my fault for not investigating this on my own but based on everything written on his albums, Headhunters is his best from his funk period but this sentiment is dead wrong.  Thrust is funkier and better than Headhunters, I don’t care how many times “Watermelon Man” and “Chameleon” have been sampled.  The upgrade from Harvey Mason to Mike Clark is a big reason why Thrust is better than Headhunters.  It is probable that this is the only time that replacing a black drummer with a white drummer made the music better and funkier.  “Mike Clark may be the funkiest WASP of all time,” Sam said, and he’s not wrong.

Why isn’t Mike Clark more famous if he’s so good?  Bad timing. Jazz-funk never took off and morphed into Weather-Report-style bullshit, and his prime coincided with the 80’s which is when jazz was in the process of being institutionalized and forgotten by society.  After Thrust, which was his first project, Mike Clark was featured on only one more Herbie Hancock studio album, Man-Child, which is good but fails to live up to its predecessor.  He performed on Betty Davis’ They Say I’m Different album which I’ve never listened to but supposedly has a cult following.  Herbie Hancock enlisted him for his Headhunters group. When guys like Donald Byrd do this, it reminds me of a rapper standing out on a few features on an album then getting invited to join a group that will never live up to the master’s work.  The Headhunters were jazz fusion’s version of The Outlawz, relegating poor Mike Clark to Yaki Kadafi status. The Headhunters album is okay, but all the jazz-fusion Herbie was involved in post-Thrust lacks the grab you by the collar intensity you feel when Mike Clark is jamming away in “Actual Proof.”  Mike Clark did have one last shining moment before jazz faded away commercially. He was featured on Eddie Henderson’s Heritage album in 1976 that opens with “Inside of You,” which Clark Kent sampled on the classic Jay-Z & Memphis Bleek song “Coming of Age.”  I’m sure Mike Clark would appreciate me using one random song that Jay-Z happened to sample him to highlight his entire post-Thrust career.

“Fuck food, give me more jazz!”  I tell Sam with pupils the size of saucers.  Food is the last thing on my mind, even though I took the acid on an empty stomach, I am not hungry and it seems like I’ll never be hungry again.  Music seems 1000 times more important than food.

To keep up with the jazz-funk vibe, Sam puts on Miles Davis’ On the Corner album as he envelops himself into a sea of Ricotta and Mozzarella.  When I join Sam outside for his post meal cigarette, I am struck by the formations the clouds are making.  The baby blue sky never looks more vibrant and all the clouds start morphing together into weird shapes that eventually reveal themselves as the lady in the Starbucks logo.  As much as I want to enjoy nature on my trip, my weed and jazz are in the basement, and those are the only things I need.

When we get down to the basement, we listen to more of On the Corner which is the best jazz-funk album, and one of the best jazz albums of all time.  Sam tells me On the Corner and Birth of the Cool are his favorite Miles Davis albums, and I appreciate the juxtaposition of that take.  It was obvious how I wanted to spend the rest of my trip, listening to jazz. I sat back and soaked up all the instruments in the clarity you only get on psychedelics. Sam pounded away at the computer researching what album we should listen to next.

“Mingus Ah Um is one of Ian’s favorite albums, he put me onto to that at MKA.”  Sam tells me referring to a high school friend of his.  Sam puts the album on and every song is as amazing. “Yo! How is this so fuckin’ good?!” I’d ask as Sam chuckled at my enthusiasm.

Next Sam plays Saxophone Colossus by Sonny Rollins which sounds impossibly good.  “Where has this album been my whole life?” I ask myself as I soak in the sounds like a junkie enjoying a hit.

“Brilliant Corners by Thelonious Monk is a classic,” Sam says as he changes the album and takes a seat on the couch. I can tell Sam is creeping close to a food coma because every time I say something to him his responses become shorter and shorter. I get so wrapped up in Brilliant Corners that I miss the fact that Sam hasn’t been responding to anything I’ve been saying for ten minutes. Sam’s officially passed out and I’m tripping too hard to drive home. I call my girlfriend at the time and ask her to pick me up. Stupidly, I tell her the truth—I was so high I thought telling the truth to my girlfriend was a good moral play that would work in my favor. She asks me why the hell would I ever do something so dumb and not to come home until the next morning when I sobered up. One of the things about doing psychedelics is you have to be in a comfortable environment with positive energy people and have nothing like school, work, or driving on your plate. I assumed the LSD was going to be on the weaker side like the first trip but my biggest mistake was not lying and telling her that my car broke down and I needed a ride. I couldn’t undo telling her or talk my way out of it, so I was stuck alone in a negative energy headspace.

I tried to shake Sam to wake him up because I didn’t want sit alone to soak in this feeling of rejection during the peak of my trip. When Sam’s in a food or drug coma there is no waking him up. During a weekday trip in high school, after trying to wake Sam up for ten minutes, Sam’s mom literally stepped on his head while closing his bedroom window, and Sam didn’t flinch. I gave up trying to wake Sam out of his carb coma and walked over to his MacBook and tried to find something that would bring my energy back up after a disorienting and negative interaction on the phone my girlfriend. I put on Smokey Robinson and The Miracles’ Greatest Hits. Wrong choice. Don’t get it twisted, Smokey is an all-time legend and that compilation is one of the greatest soul compilations in history, but instead of getting me out of my feelings it threw me further into them. When “Tears of a Clown” came on I couldn’t hold it anymore and started crying like I haven’t cried since I was locked up. The irony wasn’t lost on me and I couldn’t control the tears, they were flowing out of my eyes so fast that my nose started running. As a man, I naturally try to hold back tears and can generally control them unless it’s an extreme situation but there is no controlling your tears when on acid when shit goes left, it just all comes out. I felt sad and alone and knew if I stayed in this current mind state I would start reeling and who the fuck knows what dark and scary places the trip would take me. I had one bad shrooms trip in high school which was one of the most terrifying experiences in my life, I was sure I was going to die. I can still remember crawling to the bathroom like an infant to escape my trip. My friend’s brother’s room was next to the bathroom, and he fell asleep with ESPN on the screen. Something about seeing Marc Bulger and Matt Hasselbeck on the screen comforted me and let me know that I was in the clear.  When I returned to my friends’ room, I could not believe that my bad trip had lasted only 20 minutes. Before I escaped to the bathroom, I felt like I was stuck in the bad trip for months.

I was determined that a bad trip was not going to be my fate for the evening. I stopped crying and turned off Smokey Robinson. I needed entertainment comfort food so I searched Sam’s DVD shelf for something to watch. I brought over Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon a couple months back and popped that into my Xbox. The British accents in the movie really freaked me out for some reason, and I ejected the DVD within minutes. Sam’s DVD shelves left a lot to be desired. I had brought over a Spike Lee DVD box set a year ago trying to get Sam to watch Do the Right Thing. I bought my dad the DVD set for his birthday when I was in high school. Not to get sappy, but it really felt like my dad was looking over me making sure I would have an enjoyable movie experience that didn’t include English accents.

Which Spike Lee film should I watch? Do the Right Thing is one of my favorite American films of all time but I’ve seen it so many times. Clockers would be a fun watch on acid but I’ve also seen it a bunch of times. I’m not in the mood for Crooklyn, and Jungle Love would have had me back in my feelings. Mo’ Better Blues is my perfect option. I’ve only seen it once, and after my jazz epiphany earlier in the afternoon, no movie could be better to watch than Denzel Washington playing a fictional trumpet player. The movie largely takes place in smoke-filled jazz clubs, the same places I imagined I was in when Sam and I listened to Brilliant Corners mere hours ago.

Sam wakes up as Joi Lee’s character gives birth. I’m not sure how many people can say they’ve woken up and the first thing they saw when they opened their eyes was a woman giving birth, but Sam is now one of those people.  Sam and I watch the last 15 minutes of the movie, then have a hearty laugh about the absurdness of him waking up to that scene.

Listening to Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk earlier were great, but after watching Denzel play a fictional trumpet player, I wanted to hear the best trumpet player in history. “Put on Miles in the Sky” I tell Sam who’s somewhat shocked I picked such a late album. We listen to the album on YouTube which is great because I can see the trippy album cover while I do gravity bongs at Sam’s round table. Since I’m going to be staying at Sam’s until the next morning, I take the last tab of acid I have which kicks my trip back up but not to the extreme point from earlier. Having weed to smoke is essential during a trip: somehow it calms you down and intensifies your trip at the same time. Weed, music and good people are the only essentials for a successful LSD trip.

Sam and I spend the next 7 hours smoking and listening to various albums in Miles Davis’ discography. After Miles in the Sky we listen to Round About Midnight, Birth of the Cool, Milestones, and Miles’ first studio LP Musings of Miles. After that, we listen to the four albums that were recorded during two sessions in 1956 at Rudy Van Gelder’s studios in Hackensack, New Jersey. Miles’ quintet at the time consisted of the stacked team of John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers and my man Philly Joe Jones (is that jazz’s death lineup?). Those sessions resulted in Steamin, Workin, Cookin and Relaxin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet. The latter album was so good that Sam and I couldn’t believe it was such an unheralded project.  During the span of listening to Miles Davis with Sam I said “God, this is so good!” approximately 200 times.

Sam must have felt like he was tripping when we found our way to Doo-Bop, Miles Davis’ last album he recorded with the one and only Easy Mo Bee. “How high do you think he was when he recorded it?” I ask. Without replying Sam rolls his chair to the side and just points to a shirtless, washed Miles on the cover.

Around 4 AM Sam says he is going to bed. His mom is on vacation, so he tells me I can use her bedroom whenever I feel tired and want to pass out.  An hour later, I bring my Bose speaker into Sam’s mom’s bedroom and play Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain, one of the few Jazz albums I already have saved to my phone.  I keep falling asleep for five minutes and waking up thinking I had slept for hours.  Around 7 AM, I manage to fall asleep for a full 20 minutes and wake up in a pool of sweat, I feel like I had just had a complete night of sleep.  I don’t remember staying up for 48 hours being a side effect of acid.

I know my girlfriend will be on her way to work by now, so I pack up my bookbag and gravity bong at 8 AM, and step out into the light of day. I’m still a little loopy as I drove home, but I concentrate very hard and make it home safely.  I realize I haven’t eaten in over a day, so I walk up the street to Dunkin Donuts and buy two egg and cheese croissants.

The next thing I do is download Miles Davis and John Coltrane’s complete discographies and upload them to my phone: just in case of an emergency I’ll have more than Sketches of Spain at my disposable.  After that, I sign up for Google Play because there’s too many jazz albums for me to download, I need to have the world of jazz accessible to me at all times.  When my girlfriend comes home from work 8 hours later, I’m still smoking gravity bongs and listening to Miles Davis.

I tripped two more times over the remainder of 2015 and did a mini one-hit trip early in 2016 before temporarily hanging up my psychedelic jersey in the rafters. The other trips were fun, especially the following trip when Sam and I tripped to Killa Season in an attempt to recreate our Money & Violence trip. My last full trip was Sam and I playing Fifa on Christmas Eve while we listened to jazz for 14 straight hours. My mini comeback to tripping after being out the game for so long reminded me of Magic Johnson’s 1996 NBA comeback. I wasn’t the tank I was in my tripping prime, but I could still run the point forward and give you 15, 7 and 6. Acid is an eye-opening experience that helps you realize things about life and yourself that you wouldn’t have otherwise known: there’s a reason Steve Jobs said it’s one of the most important things he’s ever done. The downside is there’s a certain haze it leaves you in after, and I’m not talking about the haze that hovers over you the day after. I feel there’s a certain number of trips people can take before they get burnt out and stupid. Some people can handle it more than others. Like most things acid can be a good or bad thing depending on your body chemistry and the mindset you enter it in.  You do experience a feeling of “I know exactly how things work now, how I need to treat people and what I need to do,” while tripping, but that is fleeting and can’t be recaptured on demand.  I feel I have a decent number of trips left in me, but I’ve decided to use them when I’m in a more stable chapter of my life.

My psychedelic phase ended, but I haven’t gone a day without listening to jazz since that fateful trip. Every night before bed I listen to jazz for an hour as I unwind, smoke and think about my master plan. One of the great things about jazz is there’s so many interesting things going on at any given moment, but if the situation calls for it, jazz can also fade into the background in a way rap, rock and even soul can’t. Even after three years of listening to jazz non-stop, I find new discoveries in albums that I’ve listened to time and time again. I can’t describe technically what draws me to jazz so much. It’s positive vibrational music that’s appropriate morning or night, happy or sad, driving or relaxing: it can guard all five positions.

Penguin’s Guide to Jazz core collection and other lists served as a great starting point to help lead me to artists I either didn’t know or wasn’t familiar with their work as front-men. Freddie Hubbard’s Open Sesame lead to Hubtones and before you know it, I had a phase with over 5 different Freddie Hubbard LP’s. There are certain legends that cannot be defined by one compilation or LP, heck, a lot of the greats were already out of their primes by the 50’s when the jazz LP resembled what we now know it as. Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Art Tatum and others are legends with catalogs so grand in scope that you can’t just listen to their greatest hits or their best live album.

After the mind-blowing experience of listening to Thrust on LSD, I searched for a jazz-funk album that could live up to it.  Nothing could live up to Thrust or On the Corner, but searching for a great jazz-funk album lead me to Grant Green’s Alive album who quickly became one of my favorite all time jazz musicians.  Only Wes Montgomery can hold a candle to Grant Green on the guitar. Alive is probably the third best jazz-funk album ever but doesn’t even crack Grant Green’s top 3: his recordings with Sonny Clark are some of the best jazz records ever recorded.  Donald Byrd’s Blackbyrd was the only other jazz-funk album that did it for me.

I took recommendations from the few people in my life who had an actual opinion on jazz. One of Sam’s favorites is Clifford Brown which lead me to a heavy phase of listening to his album with Max Roach. It’s cruel that Clifford Brown died in a tragic car accident after being one of few jazz players in that era to not be involved with drugs. While delivering pizzas I became cool with an older black man who worked at the front desk at the Hilton. I would be running late with a bunch of deliveries waiting for me back at the pizza shop but I always made sure I had enough time to chop it up with the man who grew up listening to the albums that I was just getting into. “Have you ever heard of Errol Graner’s Concert by the Sea…..what about the Dexter Gordon Our Man in Paris album?” He would laugh out loud and ask me how I heard of these albums that he loved but hadn’t listened to in so many years.

Another cool thing about jazz is how you can find your next favorite jazz artist by looking at the lineup.  Like Cannonball Adderley’s work on Kind of Blue?  Then you’ll be sure to love his album as a leader Somethin’ Else.  The collaborative aspect of jazz reminds me a lot of hip-hop and sports.  During a film session, Lakers coach and fellow LSD fan Phil Jackson was trying to get Kobe Bryant to stop playing selfishly and get Shaq and his teammates more involved. Phil Jackson paused the tape and relayed a story of John Coltrane going on an unbelievable solo and at the end of it Miles stares at him coldly and says, “Hey, man, sometimes you have to know when to put that shit down.” God, I love Phil Jackson.

My first year of listening to jazz every night was thrilling. Right as I was done listening to The Eminent Jay Jay Johnson I would already have Lee Morgan’s Sidewinder in the chamber as my next classic to digest. Andrew!!! By Andrew Hill, The Real McCoy by McCoy Tyner, The Amazing Bud Powell, Moanin by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Back at the Chicken Shack by Jimmy Smith, Sonny’s Dream by Sonny Criss and so many more.

Like Miles, John Coltrane is an artist that I have to digest every one of his studio albums.  Coltrane’s discography is one of the most diverse catalogs in all of music.  A Love Supreme, Giant Steps and Blue Trane are three of the best jazz albums ever.  He has another five or so records that are A’s and even unauthorized releases like Coltrane’s Sound became one of my favorite random jazz albums.  But John Coltrane’s catalog like all other jazz musician fails in comparison to Miles’ prolific career.  Let’s break down his important albums into categories.

Albums that are in the Pantheon of greatest albums regardless of genre:

Birth of the Cool, 1957 (recorded in ’49-’50)

Round About Midnight, 1957

Milestones, 1958 (my favorite jazz LP of all time)

Kind of Blue, 1959

Sketches of Spain, 1960

In a Silent Way, 1969

Bitches Brew, 1970

On the Corner, 1972

Albums that range from A- to A+:

Musings of Miles, 1955

Dig, 1956

Walkin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet, 1957

Steamin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet, 1957

Workin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet, 1957

Relaxin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet, 1957

Miles Ahead, 1957

Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants, 1959 (recorded in 1954)

Porgy and Bess, 1959

Someday My Prince Will Come, 1961

E.S.P. – 1965

Live at the Plugged Nickel, 1965 (I could have included any number of Miles’ Live albums but this is the best)

Miles Smiles, 1967

Sorcerer, 1967

Nefertiti, 1967 (Miles contributed three classic albums to the best year in music history)

Miles in the Sky, 1968

Filles de Kilimanjaro, 1969

Jack Johnson, 1971

Live-Evil, 1971

1958 Miles, 1974 (recorded in….1958)

Agharta, 1975

Water Babies, 1976 (recorded in ’67-’68, I seem to be the only person who likes this album)

If you’re keeping track at home, that makes a total of eight pantheon albums. Every Beatles album is an A- at worst but even the Fab Four don’t have that many best of the very best albums. Please Please Me, A Hard Days Night, Rubber Soul and The White Album are four albums are undisputedly in the pantheon. You could construct an argument around including Help!, Sgt. Peppers, With the Beatles and Magical Mystery Tour but it’d be a reach. Including two of those four albums in the pantheon would be a stretch and still leave The Beatles two albums behind Miles. Even if you wanted to get greedy and include all four of those albums to make it an even 8 vs. 8 you’d still have Miles’ TWENTY-TWO other albums that fall in the A grade scale. Twenty-two. That type of output is unmatched by anyone in Western recorded music history. Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson and 2Pac all have at least three pantheon albums…wait a second, are we sure Michael Jackson has a third pantheon album? Let’s give Michael Jackson the benfit of the doubt because his best stuff is that good. Okay so that leaves them with 27 more A-level projects to go until they reach Miles’ level. Christ, there’s genres out there that don’t have a total of 30 A-level albums. Miles wasn’t pumping out these albums using the same formula ala Future. Cool jazz, bebop, hard bop, avant-garde, funk, fusion, orchestras, international sounds, electric sounds, rock etc. Miles was the on the forefront of nearly every post 40’s change in Jazz.  It was also Miles who slowed down the furious pace in jazz and saved it from becoming a caricature of itself.

In 1987 Miles Davis was invited to the White House and shockingly a lot of the old white people had no idea who he was.  Nancy Reagan turned to Miles and asked what he has done to merit an invitation.  Miles replied with a straight face “Well, I’ve changed the course of music five or six times. What have you done except fuck the president?”

Being an incredible musician wasn’t the only thing that drew me to Miles.  He was very cool and carried himself with the same swagger as a rapper or boxer.  Finding out Miles was a boxing nut was one of the many cool things I found out about Miles when I read his biography that was written with help right before he passed. There’re so many interesting stories to read in there from Miles kicking his heroin habit in his childhood home in St. Louis, to Philly Joe Jones’s drug escapades. Maybe nothing was cooler than finding out that Sugar Ray Robinson and Miles Davis were close friends. Eventually I slowed down on listening to Miles every week, but more than any of my other favorite artists, I go back and listen to one of his great projects. There’s so many of them that it’s impossible to tire yourself out.

When I get a tattoo to represent a piece of art that impacted my life I try to keep it simple and not just paste the person’s face on my skin. I have my favorite Japanese novel Kokoro in Japanese letters. I have the Fassbinder film Fear Eats the Soul to pay homage to a film that changed how I look at cinema. I love those tattoos but I don’t think I’d love looking in the mirror every day and seeing Fassbinder’s chubby face tattooed on my arm.  With Miles I broke this rule. I didn’t want to get a stereotypical Bitches Brew tattoo, or one of the famous pictures of him blowing the horn. I got a tattoo of Miles just how I envision him when I close my eyes: playing in the midst of a cloud of smoke at Birdland, the jazz corner of the world.

Filed Under: Amongst The Myriad, Featured, Sub Features Tagged With: Hard Bop, Herbie Hancock, Jazz, Jazz Funk, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Modal Jazz, psychedelic, Sonny Rollins

1974 Brian Linehan’s City Lights: Ella Fitzgerald

November 15, 2018 by Nicole Mitchell Leave a Comment

Find Ella Fitzgerald talk about her songs, scat singing, making movies, singing on stage, collecting cookbooks and shoes and writing a song for Martin Luther King Jr below. 

Filed Under: Amongst The Myriad, Sub Features Tagged With: Brian Linehan City Lights, Ella Fitzgerald, Ella Fitzgerald 1974, Jazz, Martin Luther King Jr

Masego: ‘Lady Lady’

October 9, 2018 by Nicole Mitchell Leave a Comment

Masego recently released his debut full-length album, Lady Lady, and it doesn’t take long to realise that it is a meditation on strong women who have taught him hard lessons in life and on those who haven’t entered his life yet. Fans have called his work sophisticated with a hint of smooth jazz and 1980’s quiet-storm R&B. The artist himself calls it “trap house jazz”. At the age of 25, Masego is an old soul that can evoke sweet tenderness through his music and caters for crowds that enjoy both in black music’s past and present in equal measure. The artist showcases his ambition in many ways that include singing, producing, and arranging and have taught himself how to play the piano, saxophone, drums, bass, and guitar.

Filed Under: Amongst The Myriad, New Releases, Sub Features Tagged With: Jazz, Lady Lady, Masego, Masego 2018, R&B, Trap House Jazz

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