Happy 30th Anniversary to Digable Planets’ second studio album Blowout Comb, originally released October 18, 1994.
The stigma of the so-called sophomore jinx can be a motherfucker. Imagine you’re an artist who makes a debut album that comes out of nowhere with no attached expectations, and it blows the fuck up. Your genre-fusing first single becomes a cultural moment that unwittingly endears you to rock critics (who all love you in New York), Billboard, the GRAMMYs, and other hip-hop outsiders who would dig rap if only it weren’t so damn rappy. No matter what your next album sounds like, it’ll be an uphill battle to please label execs who just want another crossover smash.
This was the reality for Brooklyn-based trio Digable Planets, whose introductory hit single “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat),” with its Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers-plucked upright bass and trumpet, abstract hipness depictions, and grayscale, multicultural-beatnik-speakeasy video, made them the new poster children for the faddish jazz-rap tag that folks previously tried to tack on to A Tribe Called Quest and fellow NYC transplants Gang Starr.
The just-as-eclectically-titled debut LP Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space) (1993), featuring an endless brick-and-mortar record store’s receipt worth of jazz-staple samples, infinitely repeatable hooks, and painfully literal bebop-lounge skits, further solidified and embraced the hyphenate classification.
Accepting the Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group GRAMMY in March 1994, default group lead and producer Butterfly, folding his prepared thank-you list and flowing off the dome, asked the wealthy attendees to remember America’s forgotten and less fortunate, and ended his speech with “To the Universal Black Family...one day we’re gonna recognize our true enemy, and we’re gonna stop attacking each other, and maybe then we’ll get some changes going on.” He made sure to shout out the Gods, Earths, and the Nation of Islam before they departed both the Radio City Music Hall and mainstream stages for good.
Anti-establishment award show speeches were of course nothing new, but perhaps a bit surprising for a group so universally affirmed to be The Next Big Hip Thing. It was possibly a rebellion from and rebuff of this acceptance, but most definitely a preview of the focal and tonal shift of their forthcoming music.
Six months later, Blowout Comb bared its first tooth with “9th Wonder (Blackitolism).” Though the single’s cover and verse closers proclaim they’re “slicker this year,” it was clearly neither a sequel to their 1992 opening statement nor to anything contained within their half million-selling debut LP. “9th Wonder” replaced the bright, upbeat swing samples with a replayed interpolation of the guitar licks from Ohio Players’ ever-living “Love Rollercoaster,” paired with a decelerated and deepened breakbeat chop from James Brown’s “Soul Pride,” reminiscent of N.W.A’s boom-baptizing of “Amen, Brother” on “Straight Outta Compton.”
Listen to the Album:
The Planets were still orbiting with smooth, laid-back vocals, but their lyrical approach was significantly more down to Earth, evoking images of their adopted Fort Greene blocks instead of some idyllic bohemian hang suite in space; 1993’s asteroid belts and twists gave way to 1994’s baggy camouflage fatigues, Timbs, and fully-grown dreads. For the first time ever, they invited a guest on a record: veteran DJ Jazzy Joyce, who provided both flavorful supporting vocals and turntable cuts.
The funkier, harder-hitting sound wasn’t a wholesale refutation of Reachin’ (the song sneakily shared a sample of the “What the fuck is that?” synthesizer intro from The J.B’s “Blow Your Head” with “Cool Like Dat”), but definitively signaled a new direction for the group. When the full-length dropped in October, Ladybug (a.k.a. Mecca), Doodlebug (a.k.a. Cee Knowledge), and Butterfly (a.k.a. Ish) fully shed their conceptual insect skins for a metaphor-less uniform of Black Power and community awareness and left the limiting jazz-rap designation far the fuck behind.
That’s not to say jazz is entirely absent on Blowout Comb. Unlike De La Soul, The UMCs, and Del Tha/The Funkeé/Funky Homosapien, the DPs weren’t obsessed with assassinating their inaugural character and sound on their second set. They instead employed the genre’s brass, bass, and percussion as integral tools in their sonic arsenal, rather than using those implements to project a marketable identity.
The resulting sound is a dreamy mix of lush grooves with hard-knocking drums, mostly powered by live instrumentation instead of samples. Due to the album’s intentionally muddy mix, you might not notice the presence of the additional players, whose contributions sound like they were run through an SP-1200 or an MPC-60 before hitting your ears.
This unfortunately also applies to the LPs vocals, which are mostly buried within and beneath the music, instead of sitting on top. While this creates a uniquely seamless blend of words and notes, it sometimes makes the actual rap part of the rap album feel like an afterthought or mere background noise. Cee Knowledge, in particular, sounds downright distant on tracks like the 7-minute sea of tranquility “Black Ego,” where his words are obscured by the breezy cello, pounding bass, and wonderfully messy kicks and cymbals lifted from The Meters’ “Here Comes The Meter Man.”
One positive side effect of this dichotomy is how well-tailored this musical mélange is to Ladybug Mecca’s voice. Her light and high-pitched vocal instrument manages to effectively slice through the dense audio jungle, making the largest impact of any emcee, including popular fourth parties Jeru The Damaja and new label neighbor Guru.
If you listen carefully enough, you’ll hear vivid and loving descriptions of the interiors and exteriors where they dwell, condemnations of oppression, and rousing calls to arms. Some of this was present on their debut, but far more sparingly, and obscured with evasive language. “Dial 7 (Axioms of Creamy Spies),” the record’s mega-funky (pardon me, funkayyyy) centerpiece and second single, makes their purpose abundantly clear: Black liberation by any means.
While this laser focus on spurring revolution and abolishing devils may have been alarming to those who dug Reachin’s more carefree and youthful vibes or came off as a concerted effort to appeal to a segment of the Black audience who resented the group’s establishment approval, it was likely a natural function of maturing and dealing face-to-face with executives who misunderstood their mission.
Perhaps predictably, Blowout Comb wasn’t promoted well and lit up neither the charts nor radio station consoles the same way as their first go-round. This has often been characterized as a side effect of white critics not taking kindly to the Black Nationalist overtones, but the album was mostly acclaimed by the day’s so-called tastemakers. Given how strong the competition was in 1994, and the group’s disinterest in repeating history or appealing to the masses, their sophomore effort was destined to become the quintessential initially-underappreciated and eventually-celebrated sleeper success.
The group disbanded shortly after its release, but have reunited off and on for live performances throughout the years. All three members have made solo runs, but Ish has proven to be the most prolific, founding avant-garde groups like Cherrywine, Shabazz Palaces, and most recently, Knife Knights. The fact that they still draw sizable crowds proves how singular their impact was, even with such an abbreviated discography. Despite its poor commercial performance, Blowout Comb remains an extremely playable litmus test for good music connoisseurs.
LISTEN:
Editor's note: this anniversary tribute was originally published in 2019 and has since been edited for accuracy and timeliness.