Saving The Planets

If you’re ever compiling a list of the most overrated groups of the last twenty years, be sure to place Digable Planets somewhere in the top 5.

The New York-based trio garnered plenty of attention fourteen years ago with their first, and last, good album, Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space), which became a hit on the strength of the popular single “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat).” You couldn’t turn on a radio in 1993 without hearing “Slick,” a skillful jazz-rap hybrid obviously influenced by A Tribe Called Quest. The album itself was a solid piece of work in the Tribe tradition, with such tracks as “Pacifics,” “Where I’m From,” “What Cool Breezes Do,” and “Escapism (Gettin’ Free)” standing out in particular. There was an inventiveness and sharpness to the lyrics, a creativity that was in woefully short supply in pop music at the time: I couldn’t help comparing the depth of “Slick” to the banality of the singles from Janet Jackson’s then-popular CD janet.

Reachin’ was not a flawless album: “La Femme Fetal,” a pro-Roe v. Wade song that garnered tremendous acclaim from music critics, was a perfectly dreadful tune: I thought the song was over-the-top propaganda when I first heard it, and I was pro-choice at the time! The song appears to have been written with the specific intent of getting positive coverage from those who agreed with the political sentiments, as opposed to being some sort of principled statement on the part of the artists. The song is so absurd that at one point, the lyrics imply that David Souter, of all people, is opposed to abortion. Talk about a track that shouldn’t have made the final cut.

The Planets won a Grammy for “Slick,” and their new fans waited in anticipation for their next album. Of course, once those fans heard that next album, 1994’s Blowout Comb, most of them were wondering what the heck happened to the group. Comb was, quite frankly, an abomination, one of the decade’s worst albums. Instead of the creativity of Reachin’, the lyrics were a mishmash of militancy and mediocrity; it appeared that the Planets were trying to rip off Tribe and Public Enemy at the same time, to little positive effect. The songs “Jettin’” and “9th Wonder (Blackitolism)” were half-decent, but the rest of the album was manifestly worthless. It was as though the Planets failed to realize that faux-militancy never led to quality music: much like De La Soul’s 1993 debacle Buhloone Mindstate, Comb is a lamentable example of talented artists squandering their gift by filling their albums with bizarre sociopolitical rants.

Looking back, a fair case can be made that the Planets weren’t all that in the first place, and that Reachin’ only received so much acclaim because it was released during a time in which pop music had reached a creative nadir. Folks were desperate to hear something that wasn’t cut from the usual hip-hop or “grunge” cloth: critics embraced Reachin’, Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville, and U2’s Zooropa not because they were classic albums, but because they were better than the garbage that filled the music industry’s recycling bins to capacity in 1993. The industry was still at a creative low tide in 1994, but Comb was so bad that it couldn’t be judged approvingly even under a lesser standard.

The Planets broke up shortly after the release of Comb; after spending years being involved in solo projects or participating in new groups, the group reunited in 2005 and released a greatest-hits album. If they ever put out an album of new material, it will hopefully stand the test of time, instead of receiving exaggerated praise because of the times.