“If you know, you know. If you were there, you were there.”
That’s the best way I can describe the bassline at the start of Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat) by Digable Planets. It’s recognisable from the very first notes.
It may not be the most chilled-out record I could have picked for a cool head and a warm heart. When I read those words, though, I couldn’t think of anything else. Cool like dat.
It was the first single from the trio’s debut album, Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space). It came out in the US on Pendulum and Elektra in November 1992, and the album followed in February 1993. In the UK it reached number 67 that February. In the US it got to number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and went to number one on Billboard’s rap singles chart. At the Grammys in 1994 it won Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group.
Where that bassline comes from
The double bass is sampled from Stretching by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, recorded in the Netherlands in 1978 with Dennis Irwin on bass and released on the Dutch label Timeless.
Digable Planets were Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler, Mariana “Ladybug Mecca” Vieira and Craig “Doodlebug” Irving, with Butterfly producing. It’s one of those classic records where jazz and hip hop meet, and it’s been played over and over for more than thirty years.
A cool head and a warm heart
Staying calm under pressure is one half of it. Staying kind while you do it is the other. As I said in an interview at the LA Tribune Leadership Summit, “My favourite question is what would love do next?” Nigel Risner and I talked it through on the podcast in What Would Love Do?
Put this one on before a conversation where you need to keep your cool without going cold.
Which record do you reach for when you need to keep your cool?
