Digable Planets reunited for a 20-show summer tour in 2016. If you live in one of the cities they hit you really shouldn't have missed the show. But if you did, here's the second of the sold out L.A. shows with Butterfly, Ladybug Mecca, and Doodlebug/Cee Knowledge rockin' the set, backed by funk band The Culprits (no, not the indie folk band from Tenn. or the horror punk/hardcore band from Fla.).
When Yasiin Bey killed off the Mos Def and went on to perform the LA leg of his 2016 retirement tour in a fashion so bizarre and Lauryn Hill-esque it made the audio recording of the show unlistenable, I decided to dig into the archives and pull out this 2001 gem — Black Jack Johnson. The band, named after the legendary fighter, and made up of Mos Def, guitarist Dr. Know, keyboardist the late Bernie Worrell, bassist Doug Wimbish, and drummer Will Calhoun,
What eventually happened to the group is anyone’s guess, but this live show from NYC circa 2001, remind us that there was a time when Mos Def really was mighty.
About a month ago I took a break from the funk to make what was initially intended to be just a quick, fairly typical mix in honor of Malik Taylor, aka Phife Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest. Fast forward several weeks and several dozen hours later and the quick mix evolved into "I am Phife: His Words & His Rhymes," a 2-hour tribute to the 5-foot Assassin that includes all of (and only) Phife's verses from the 3 classic ATCQ albums, along with interview clips and the genre-spanning music used to create the Quest soundscape HipHop heads fell in love with more than 25 years ago! Thank you Q-Tip. Thank you Ali Shaheed Muhammad. Thank you Jarobi White. Thank you Phife — Rest in peace!