Digable Planets are reaching a new place with their music. Said Butterfly as quoted in Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip Hop Junkies, “Time and space are conceptual, and it can only relate to you as an individual. We used [‘Reachin’ in the album title] to talk about trying to get to a new place.”

In this particular line, Butterfly spits that their music can hit a spot close to Mars. Through using the phrasing of “six blocks east of Mars” in the metaphor, he explains both where Digable Planets is going, and where they’re from. Said Butterfly, “No matter how abstract we might have been, all our music was from the ‘hood.” Blocks in space = pieces of the 'hood reaching new places.

Doodlebug, aka Craig Irving, on why he chose his insect name (quoted in Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip Hop Junkies):

“We had to come up with insect names, and I created Doodlebug because I was like, ‘If I’m gonna be an insect, I’m gonna be a cool insect.’ I remembered the movie Cleopatra Jones, and Antonio Fargas was Doodlebug. So I went with that. The original other guy in the group was called the Termite, but I wasn’t going to take that one.”

Even when the group was just beginning to form, Butterfly (aka Ishamael Butler) imagined the members as insects. He’s quoted in Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip Hop Junkies:

“They work together for the good of the colony. It was a socialist, communist thing that I was talking about. Nobody really got what I was doing with Digable before it became a hit. I was confident in the concept and how original it was – I just didn’t know how the rap world would take it. But, as we learned, sometimes it’s good to be like an outcast.”

F u if u hate the bitch mob!

Come on now, you already knew they rocked the funk. Digable Planets are known for their fusion of jazz, funk, and hip hop.

Digable Planets' style is a fusion of older influences and 90’s era hip hop. Older influences include George Clinton, Miles Davis, James Brown, Herbie Hancock, funk act Kool & The Gang and the man of honor himself Jimi Hendrix.

Digable Planets is bringing back funk and jazz (then) but with a twist of their own, modern hip hop style (now).

Digable Planets is well known for their fusion of funk, hip hop and jazz. Funk was a very popular genre of music in the 70’s – take for example the overwhelming popularity of Soul Train at the time.

In the first line, Butterfly flexes his knowledge of funk by referencing the amount of funk in seven zips of weed. Funk can be slang for high quality mary jane. A zip of marijuana is an ounce – so seven ounces of good weed means a lot of funk!

In the second line, he essentially hits the point home by saying that funk is phat (aka super cool, dope, raw, etc. – kind of dated slang these days). He raps “homey homey don’t you know me” to rhetorically ask: You know me, do I ever not produce dope ish? Butterfly is bringing funk back and it’s fly, ok?

Like the line “Isaac Hayes would have his own 900 number” at the beginning of the song, this line is very sarcastic. Boiling all the Black Panthers stood for and achieved in the 60’s and 70’s down to being worth of a cartoon is ridiculous.

The radical message and achievements of the Black Panthers would be difficult to be done justice in a cartoon portrayal – as Isaac Hayes' voice would not be done justice simply as a 900 phone line operator.

Again, Digable Planets takes a hugely popular piece of 90’s culture – cartoons – and tacks it on to the talent of an important figure from the 60’s and 70’s. They’re bringing old and new together – but in mismatched and sarcastic pairings.

Life is unpredictable. Our reality could even just be a dream.

Butterfly juxtaposes the instability of life with Digable Planets' unwavering talent through using a simile comparing DP’s ability to continuously wreak havoc (with their killer rhymes) to the constancy of the rain.