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Some Basics
“I was basically thinking the music we made was something people could dig, so Digable. I was listening to a lot of George Clinton and Sun Ra, so I was on some space shit, cosmic. I was thinking of each person as a planet, we are all in a solar system, a galaxy and trying to orbit around each other. That was my imagination for those words.”
- Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler
“Digable Planets performed with live musicians and showed audiences that there isn’t any box that hip-hip should fit in. There wasn’t ‘conscious hip-hop’ and ‘gangsta rap.’ The group proved through their music and their style that they could be hardcore b-boys and b-girls, intellectuals, and party people all at the same time.”
- Ericka Blount Danois, okayplayer (2018)
The members of Digable Planets found one another through two different meetings: Butler, who originally hailed from Seattle, met Craig “Doodlebug” Irving while interning at Philadelphia’s Sleeping Bag Records; Irving had met Mariana “Ladybug” Vieira at DC’s Howard University. They all had similar upbringings – all three had parents involved in the Black Liberation movement (Vieira’s from their/her(?) native Brazil) – and, not surprisingly, they all felt the pull of music, whether from obsessing over the radio dial (Ladybug) or raiding their parents’ record collections (Butterfly and Doodlebug). Ladybug found further inspiration from the breakthrough of some famous female rappers of the late 1980s (e.g., Roxanne Shante, MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, Salt & Pepa (and Spinderella, dammit!).
Officially formed in 1989, the first demos recorded as “Digable Planets” featured only Butler, but he and Irving vibed all right (“once we got cool”), so Butler made his pitch and worked his connections. From Irving:
“He asked me to join him in putting this new group together and after hearing the demos he put together I was hooked. Eventually Ladybug joined the group and Butter through the connects he made while being an intern at Sleeping Bag records, was able to parlay a meeting with Dennis Wheeler, an A&R at an up and coming label called Pendulum and the rest is history!”
History took a few years to start, but they put out work and garnered attention (there’s something about a “Rosie Perez co-sign on In Living Color” in the interview with Vieira, but she leaves it hanging) until Pendulum Records signed them in 1992 and Digable Planets relocated to Brooklyn. They had a good bond early. From Vieira:
“I was basically thinking the music we made was something people could dig, so Digable. I was listening to a lot of George Clinton and Sun Ra, so I was on some space shit, cosmic. I was thinking of each person as a planet, we are all in a solar system, a galaxy and trying to orbit around each other. That was my imagination for those words.”
- Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler
“Digable Planets performed with live musicians and showed audiences that there isn’t any box that hip-hip should fit in. There wasn’t ‘conscious hip-hop’ and ‘gangsta rap.’ The group proved through their music and their style that they could be hardcore b-boys and b-girls, intellectuals, and party people all at the same time.”
- Ericka Blount Danois, okayplayer (2018)
The members of Digable Planets found one another through two different meetings: Butler, who originally hailed from Seattle, met Craig “Doodlebug” Irving while interning at Philadelphia’s Sleeping Bag Records; Irving had met Mariana “Ladybug” Vieira at DC’s Howard University. They all had similar upbringings – all three had parents involved in the Black Liberation movement (Vieira’s from their/her(?) native Brazil) – and, not surprisingly, they all felt the pull of music, whether from obsessing over the radio dial (Ladybug) or raiding their parents’ record collections (Butterfly and Doodlebug). Ladybug found further inspiration from the breakthrough of some famous female rappers of the late 1980s (e.g., Roxanne Shante, MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, Salt & Pepa (and Spinderella, dammit!).
Officially formed in 1989, the first demos recorded as “Digable Planets” featured only Butler, but he and Irving vibed all right (“once we got cool”), so Butler made his pitch and worked his connections. From Irving:
“He asked me to join him in putting this new group together and after hearing the demos he put together I was hooked. Eventually Ladybug joined the group and Butter through the connects he made while being an intern at Sleeping Bag records, was able to parlay a meeting with Dennis Wheeler, an A&R at an up and coming label called Pendulum and the rest is history!”
History took a few years to start, but they put out work and garnered attention (there’s something about a “Rosie Perez co-sign on In Living Color” in the interview with Vieira, but she leaves it hanging) until Pendulum Records signed them in 1992 and Digable Planets relocated to Brooklyn. They had a good bond early. From Vieira:
