Digable Planets Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space)

4 Stars - Excellent - "...[Digable Planets] methodically strip hip-hop to the bone with Afro-chic witticisms backed by a trunkload of retro jazz and funk beats...everything hip-hop should be: artistically sound, unabashedly conscious and downright cool..."
"...this sexually mixed trio creates an ultrahip, deliberately fuzzy, retro universe...DP's brand of funk floats along on air-spun smoothness..." - Rating: B+
3 Stars - Good - "...suffused with a self-consciously cool, controlled energy...there's supple funk and soft soul blended into the mix, too..."
4.5 Stars - Very Good Plus - "...Digable Planets manages to make a seamless and inventive style-leaping statement, although the handiwork is all in the rapping and the sampling..."
3.5 Stars - Very Good - "...a loving blend of jazz, old school hip-hop, Five Percent perspectives and off-center beatnik rhymes...the cool cat sound of jazz-hop is very much alive...12 tracks of pure peace vibes...both substantive and relaxing..."
"...the music [on REACHIN'...] goes straight for the unconscious: it's like elevator music, yet all the ice in the world couldn't freeze out the seductive sensuality of these raps..."
Village Voice (3/1/94, p.5) - Ranked #10 in the Village Voice's 1993 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll.
Village Voice (3/9/93, p.80) - "...The airy delicacy of their sampled groove seems magically hyper-real in this pop context, transforming Butterfly and Doodle's weakness into wit and Lady Bug's samba-like skippity-skip into a come-on that's equal parts sexuality and self-respect..." - Rating: A
8 - Excellent - "...Digable Planets are instantly likeable, delicious sounding and supremely strange...take[s] the artistry and excitement of the hip-hop nation into another stage of development..."