Cee Knowledge, better known as Doodlebug of the Grammy winning hip-hop jazzified topic spittin’ trio Digable Planets, adopted the moniker Cee Knowledge while studying at Howard University. Cee-Know grew up in a city full of musical traditions from the cosmic jazz of the Sun Ra Arkestra to the new Philly soul of Bilal and Musiq Soulchild and that ground-breaking hip-hop force that is The Roots and Eve. He also forged that Cosmic Funk Orchestra combining and united jazz & hip hop artists from Delaware & Philadelphia. We all know about the genre-crossing star falling to Earth sounds of Digable Planets but that vision didn’t stop when DP stopped making music for some time, that same energy brought creative forces like Roy Ayers, Sun Ra Arkestra & friend of the proGram, Ladybug Mecca toGether to remix some CFO tracks. A winner of the NAACP image aways and a Sony Innovators award. I call him a friend.
I had the chance to set up a long overdue hanG with Cee recently to go over so many things that have been happening. First off we touch on why it was I saw my Digable Planets fam on my TV?! CBS hosted a Grammy salute to 50 years of Hip Hop and so many of the legends were there to honor, be honored and help build off the past. We got a chance to talk about the music and the feels of then and now of 30 years of their ‘Reachin” album. We both were astonished at how some of the ‘topical’ talk of then is still relevant today, and out on tour, how the crowds are filling up the spaces with diversity of all peoples’ is represented. One of the main reasons I wanted to catch up w/Cee this time around was his dippin’ his toe into Co-authorship on a graphic novel entitled: The Epic of the Heaven and Earth Association. We go from how this idea kinda developed with his love of comics, developed over time and is now almost to the point of another edition. There’s also a podcast and you can subscribe here. Cee details how the view from the lens in this podcast is not from the humans on Earth as we know them. Get heavy with this. of course our time toGether would not be complete without talking NBA hoops, especially where our rival teams are currently sitting in the division and who is ballin’ that we respect. Always a classic(ish) time with Cee & G.
