A native of Seattle, Washington, Ishmael Butler was the son of revolutionary Black Panthers educators who filled his young world words and music that would become his lives work. After graduating from high school, he attended the University of Massachusetts on a basketball scholarship, but wound-up leaving. Moving to the Washington, D.C. area, Ish became friends with Craig Irving and Mary Ann Vierra (Mecca). The three co-founded the rap group Digable Planets in D.C. and Philly (where the boys were roommates for a minute) and set-off to New York City in hopes of bringing their vision to fruition.

With the introduction of the Native Tongues crew, A Tribe Called Quest, as well as projects produced by DJ Premier and Easy Mo Bee, jazz was becoming a more acceptable sonic source for samples as well as live instrumentation to be used on records, and Digable was determined to flip the style their way. “Jazz as an idea in hip-hop was a story of tradition and shared knowledge, of connecting a younger cohort to the radical art of their parents’ generation,” Pitchfork editor Mark Richardson wrote in 2013. “And in the tense era of the 80s and 90s, there was comfort to be found in that continuum, of positioning this new music in the context of an earlier sound that changed the world.”

http://www.soulhead.com/2016/12/15/sleptonsoul-featuring-digable-planets-blowout-comb-by-michael-a-gonzales