Still cool like dat, Digable Planets to perform in Philly

Craig "Doodlebug" Irving, Mary Ann "Ladybug Mecca" Vieira, and Ishmael "Butterfly" Butler just flew in from the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, and, boy, are their arms tired.

"Man, that was an off-the-chain show for us," says Irving. The Philadelphia native is one-third of Digable Planets - the '90s alternative live hip-hop trio (before live hip-hop was a thing) whose crossover pop hit "Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)" earned them a Grammy and whose jazzy second album, 1994's Blowout Comb, is an underground classic.

And whose shows Thursday and next Friday at Ardmore Music Hall are musts for rap addicts.

"I didn't know who would be at that Pitchfork show for us, but yes, we got the old heads who knew us when and the young heads who've heard the legend," Irving says in response to a question.

The legend starts with each separate member - Philadelphia's Irving, Brooklyn's Butler, Silver Spring, Md.'s Vieira - having family roots in jazz and R&B, as well as Doodlebug's career as a DJ. "It just all worked out for the three of us," says Irving, "right place, right time."

They met as students and burgeoning artists, bouncing back and forth between Washington's Howard University hip-hop scene and Philadelphia's club klatch. Then there's the Chew Avenue connection.

"Ishmael's grandmother used to live there right in Mount Airy, around the corner from my grandmother. He had this idea for a group, the whole concept. King Britt was there, too," a Philadelphian who wound up as a touring DJ for the Digables. "We sat around our grandmas' basements working on break beats. Ish and I used to meet up at Houston Hall parties at" Penn. "Back in the day, they were the place to be. I was dating Ladybug at the time, so she was always around. It all came together very naturally."

That synergy of three jazz-minded rappers with similar dreams, lyrical vibes, and conceptual éclat (hence, everyone's having bug-themed names) made them unique. Even more so, the willingness to have a feminine yin to the masculine yang - unheard of at the time.

"It wasn't conscious. She slipped in seamlessly," Irving says of Vieira. "I think it excited and intimated people. Like wow, men and women working together reps real life."

Then there was the live hip-hop feel, something that, in 1992, wasn't de rigueur. Being different made them daring without losing their out-of-the-gate pop-hop sensibility. "I can't lie: Having a hit made a lot of things easier, but as artists, touring and getting our mind states molded by travel and such, we were rebellious. We wanted to carve an entirely new sculpture."

Blowout Comb became that sculpture, a loose and eclectically rhythmic album that - though it didn't sell as much as their 1993 debut, Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space) - is now more legendary and inspirational to those who followed its weirdness. "That record's flow," says Irving, "came as naturally as the first did when that happened."

Personal differences ("not musical ones; human beings have faults") split the trio apart by 1995, leaving Irving to become the smartly funky "Cee Knowledge," and Butler to form the Sun Ra-ish Shabazz Palaces. Vieira made an album in 2005 as Ladybug Mecca. They didn't stay in touch, but they didn't stay out of touch either ("I'd run into Ishmael on the subway in New York all the time, like, 'Oh snap' "). Starting in 2005, they began to hammer out their differences, and now, 20 years after they splintered, Digable Planets is back as a working, touring unit.

"We're way more mature and have more respect for the brand now. It's bigger than the three of us," says Irving. "I'm humbled."

Digable to the end, the trio is looking forward to making new music while not eschewing whom each has become as a solo artist. "We're going to start making demos on the bus on the West Coast end of the tour and see what happens," says Irving. "We just gotta be back in that right-space-right-time vibe again."

Digable Planets and Camp Lo, 8:30 p.m. Thursday (sold out) and July 29 ($25 in advance, $30 day of) at Ardmore Music Hall, 23 Lancaster Ave., Ardmore, 610-649-8389, ardmoremusic.com.