Sasquatch! Music Festival 2016, Day 2: Digable Planets

Digable Planets is officially back. After announcing their reunion tour at a NYE show in Seattle, the group followed through with the announcement as they took the main stage of Sasquatch! Music Festival by storm Saturday night. Ishmael "Butterfly" Butler, Craig "Doodlebug" Irving and Mary Ann "Ladybug Mecca" hadn’t played together since 2011 (before the NYE show), but each MC bobbed and weaved through the slew of cosmic beats without a hitch. The group cited creative differences as the source for their break up in the 2000’s and Butler went on to start the widely popular rap duo Shabazz Palaces, so to find all three on the same stage trading bars again was a treat to say the least. Backed by a four piece band that included two percussionists (one of which was Tendai "Baba" Maraire of Shabazz Palaces), the group tore through their set, drenching the crowd with esoteric beats and classic 90’s flow. As Butler paused to announce that they wrote the upcoming song in the 90’s he was met with cheers. His retort of “why yall cheering for 1992? Yall weren’t even around” seemed to capture the current trend of romanticizing 90’s hip-hop perfectly. But as the group cruised through the set ending song “Cool Like That,” they seemed to do a better job of showing that the force that is Digable Planets had not been romanticized in their time away.