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353: Digable Planets // Blowout Comb

Blowout Comb Digable Planet 1994, Capitol

Blowout Comb is the best rap album ever made, and I’ve listened to it hundreds of times, but I’d be lying if I told you I knew the name of every track as it comes on. It’s not that the tracks are same-y, so much as that the record has such an endless, unified groove. No matter how great an individual song is, no matter how much I’d like to hear it again immediately, I never want to disrupt the record’s flow—and besides, there are no skips on Blowout Comb. How do I get at the particular magic at work here? It’s something like this: most everything is so laid back, from the mix tucking the three emcees’ vocals under the frequently analog bass to the way its classic soul and jazz samples are used for texture rather than hooks, that you could loop almost any single track for an hour without it becoming grating. It’s not an album of standout quotables or an iconic persona or killer hooks—it’s one that makes life feel alright, beautiful, and connected to an ancient cool.

Which isn’t to say that it doesn’t knock: the production on “Dog It,” “Jettin’,” “Agent 7,” “Blowing Down” and “9th Wonder” kicks like a rhino’s subwoofer heartbeat, and even the chillest parts feel like floating in a funky aquarium. But the song that has always stood out to me is “Black Ego,” a blissed out seven-minute dream boldly placed at track two. Built on a fluttering sample from jazz guitarist Grant Green’s “Luanna’s Theme” and a Meters’ breakbeat, producers Ish Butler and Dave Darlington layer on live bass, vibraphone, and whispered backing vocals that match the exact hiss of the cymbal hits. The seams between the sampled and live instrumentation disappear, creating a track that feels like it is improvising right alongside the emcees, riding out with a tasty two-minute long jazz guitar solo. Even at seven-minutes, I’d happily play it over—but then the enticing sax loop that opens “Dog It” hits, and Blowout Comb keeps the party rolling on to the next one.

Way back on episode #13 of this series, I covered Black Up, Ish’s 2011 comeback record as Shabazz Palaces. A strange, futuristic album that delves so deeply into glitchy electronic production that it often barely scans as a rap album at all, Black Up is nonetheless a continuation of Blowout Comb’s vision of Black pride and the historical continuum of African American music. If Blowout Comb drew that history into one time-spanning Brooklyn block party, Black Up feels a bit like that party being recalled by a cyborg from an unimaginably advanced Afrofuturist timeline. Between the two, Ish Butler created two of the freshest and most original rap records ever made. He (and his colleagues in both Digable Planets and Shabazz) deserve more mention in any conversation about hip-hop’s all-time greatest visionaries.

353/365

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A lost of misinformation on the web and on tumblr about this song. Written by Jimmy Cliff and Guilly Bright and recorded on Cliff's 1972 album, "Another Cycle."

If Cliff owns the copyright to the song, he has made good money. "Sitting In Limbo" has been covered many times. All of the covers that are on movies, albums, live videos, posts on social media …. each one, and each time it is played is money in the bank for the owner of the copyright.

We are all sitting in Limbo 

Jimmy Cliff Sitting In Limbo

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a Wayne Shorter composed classic

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Blondie, 1977

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No such thing as "Old School" punks. There were punks between 1976 and 1980 and there were either those inspired or imitators. Anything post 1990 is flattery at best.

45 years ago today

The Clash released their single 'Bank Robber' after it been available as an import only. The band's record company CBS didn't want to release the record saying it was not commercial enough.

The Clash - Bank Robber - 3/8/1980 - Capitol Theatre (Official)

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Berkeley Community Theater on February 9, 1979.

by Peter Weiss

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‘A Communion of the Spirits’ Photographed by Roland L. Freeman (1970s—1990s) via. blackarchives.co on Instagram.

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Blue - Rio de Janeiro, 2023

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Yabby You & King Tubby - A Yard Is Not A Yard [ca late 70s], It has the main theme from Burt Bacharach’s A House Is Not A Home, overdubbed with Nyabinghi drums. More of a curiosity release, not perfectly finalized, and hardly a King Tubby mix, but still very interesting

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Jackie Mittoo - Ayatollah. Sometimes titled Russian Satellite. Very mystical sounding Bunny Lee production 

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Tommy McCook  † May 5, 1998

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Wu Tang Clan