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Also this issue: Where House? Hurricane Mozart One night the rain began to fall and it would not stop. The Downbeat 5 Jonathan Richman Glass Candy Gold Chains Dynamo Productions |
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June 26-July 2, 2003
music
 COOL LIKE DAT: ãEverybody has hip-hop in their music,ä says Butler. ãRap and hip-hop always combined all elements.ä |
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Ishmael Butler and Cherrywine have a whole new digable plan.
In the same rainy city where grunge powerhouses Nirvana and Pearl Jam set fire to a sagging music industry, Ishmael Butler is staking a claim with another "next movement." This is a homecoming; he was born and raised in Seattle.
It's a long way from Brooklyn, where he was known as Butterfly and his band, Digable Planets, made waves for fusing jazz and hip-hop. The trio copped a Grammy for "Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)" from their 1993 debut album, Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space). After releasing their second effort the following year, Blowout Comb, though, the group disbanded.
With his new project, Cherrywine, Butler delivers the vocals, guitar and teases the keys of the "nude phantom" (a traditional funk keyboard), alongside bandmates Bubba Jones and brothers Thaddeus and Gerald "Tugboat" Turner.
"Everybody has hip-hop in their music," says Butler. "Rap and hip-hop always combined all elements. Forever. From singing to rapping to live instruments, it's always been in there." From playing the saxophone in junior high to hip-hoppin' all the way through through college to delving into blues and the guitar today, the ex-Digable frontman says, "I always wanted to play and when I moved back to Seattle, a lot of the cats here that I knew, they played, so I got a guitar and started hanging around them, picking up stuff, learning stuff and making music with them."
Urban-beat. Trip-hop. Hip-hop. Funk. Soul. Rock. Which is it? In terms of sheer funkiness and willingness to push the musical envelope, Cherrywine's garnered comparisons to OutKast and Parliament. Butler, however, is quick to eschew comparisons and genre pigeonholing: "Sometimes [categories] seem to represent a certain amount of laziness rather than inquisitiveness. When I go make a song, I don't be like, ŒOK, I'm about to make a hip-hop song' or, ŒI'm about to make a hip-hop song with rock in it.' I just make music and let other motherfuckers say what it's gonna be 'cause that seems to be what they want to do."
On "What I'm Talking" -- the first track on Cherrywine's debut, Bright Black (DCide/Babygrande) -- clapping hands lead off a groovy funk storm with Butler's vocals cleverly clinging in the cut, allowing the music itself to be the star. Holding on to his trademark straight-up, no-chaser flow, Ish is still smooth, without being mellow.
The spacy "Anchorman Blues" finds him dishing on relationships, lust affairs and lying: "I had to lie 'cause you, you would-a kept yourself behind locked doors/ I had to lie 'cause you, you wouldn't have known who to trust anymore/ I had to lie, 'cause what at the time seemed like so much fun/ I had to lie 'cause when I saw your face you wouldn't believe what I done." Its sexed up guitars, synthesizers and keys are reminiscent of the Purple One's Dirty Mind era.
Why so sexy? It's simple: Ishmael Butler is one sexy dude. "Sexiness, sensuality, sultriness -- those are aspects and elements of life that are very important, influential and motivating to me. I like something that's going to provoke your senses. I like things that are motivated by men and women's interaction," he says. His voice is a combination of Brooklyn meets Seattle, with a tinge of Western twang.
But what is Bright Black? A cult favorite or a record-store obscurity with no real category? Maybe neither. All that genre-bending doesn't necessarily relegate him to only modest success. After all, the Digables performed a balancing act between two musical categories and did OK for themselves.
The past follows Cherrywine everywhere. "There are two types of fans: fans that like what you do and fans that like what you've done," Butler explains, still questioning how his old audience will respond to his new work. "Some people will be like, ŒMan he made an album in 1995 and I want it to sound like that. And it didn't, so I'm upset,' or some people might be like, ŒAye, this is his new shit, it's kinda cool. I like it.'"
In an industry where artists are a commodity and the shelf life of careers doesn't mirror the Energizer Bunny's everlasting trip, evolution is a good thing. Butler is sure his fans are out there. "A fan is somebody that likes an individual's mind state, likes somebody's daring and somebody's courage when it comes to music. When they hear that somebody they dig comes out, they listen to what that person's done and try to figure it out."
Cherrywine plays Fri., June 27, 9 p.m, $5, The Five Spot, 5 S. Bank St., 215-574-0070.
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