最酷的圈外人（The 33 1/3 B-sides乐评翻译）

这篇译自这本书，我觉得太好玩儿了，和看过的任何乐评都不一样，所以搬运过来。作者讲述Digable Planets如何帮作者在匪帮说唱盛行的年代找到了自己独特的黑人意识。尽管它音乐性上不是最好最超前的，但在作者心中有特殊的意义。

这本书是著名The 33 1/3乐评系列书讲“B面专辑”的一本。黑胶单曲中，正面（A面）刻录了主打歌，反面（B面）则通常收录A面歌曲的remix或其他小众、实验的作品。这本书里讲了很多没有放在聚光灯下作者们却觉得值得一讲的专辑，很多都配了作者自己的故事。其他乐评也很有意思，打算未来多翻几篇。

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十七岁时我想象自己是一张黑胶唱片。那是1994年，我没有黑胶唱机，但唱片这东西听起来很酷，而酷是那个年纪最重要的事情。青少年们以品味定义自己，因为他们经济和感情都没独立到用其他方式自我定义。小孩们会为品味打架，还因此交上朋友，因为好品味也决定了相近的品行。一个人30岁以后就不这样了。如果还这样，他们会被叫做长不大的大人。在那个年龄，我们读书、观影、听歌、着装的品味展现了我们是什么而不是什么。

我当时像迷恋女孩一样迷恋音乐 (巨迷恋）。Aaron Waldkoetter和我因为爱音乐成了好朋友，尽管在音乐以外我们完全不同。我们爱给朋友分享音乐爱到了强买强卖的地步。在高中第三年不知怎么着我们成了这个达拉斯小高中的非官方DJ。我们用CD磁带放歌儿，有时在市中心的行政楼里父母监护的舞会上，有时在朋友家、后院、泳池边没父母管的派对上。这可能纯粹因为只有我们愿意去花心思找好的音响和混音台。显然别人觉得我俩品味不错，收藏广泛、古怪、又不太古怪。我们能把人留在那些油毡地毯黏黏的舞池里，即使我们没完没了地按错键、连错设备、烧断保险丝。

拿唱片打比方，Aaron就是亮丽的A面：一米八，金发蓝眼，瘦身材，希腊雕塑式的脸颊，牛气哄哄。我则是B面：黑皮肤，书呆子，言行尴尬。我没能融入到我的黑人同学中，他们管我叫“奥利奥”：外黑里白。

不DJ的时候，我感觉甚至连唱片的某一面都不是，更像个盗版demo：没完成，粗制滥造、没人要、迷失。社交上来说还不如当个B面。难怪我喜欢的音乐都是流行的（hip-hop, rock, techno， 这些我想参与的90年代的A面）但是里面地下、怪异、却传奇的音乐。更深的B面这头才适合我。

我第一次听Digable Planets的Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)是一次跟一车黑人小孩去棒球赛的路上。我们叫“L.G. Pinkston维京人”，特别垃圾。我（一个一般般的外场游击手）和其他人一起听着100.3JAMZ电台，然后那个嗡嗡的原声贝斯伴着响指鼓点出来了：随意、低调、太他妈酷了。然后碎拍进入，不知为什么听着比贝斯还重。然后是那个巨飞的小号，低调不张扬。我当时刚听爵士，这种爵士和说唱的融合正合我的耳朵。在Butterfly还没用他那放松、小声、半说半唱的方式开始说之前，我就乐咧了。他说的一半话我都没听懂，但倒是听到了那些充满诱惑的双关语（“地下最凶的‘货’里都有她，我们带劲的歌让你嗨像大* （译注：joint既指“地方”（俱乐部）又指**）”，酷但不张扬。我喜欢这个flow，想继续搞懂我没懂的东西，因为我想融入到这个组合在讲的故事里来。

Hip-Hop本应是最贴切我那时生活的音乐，但从N.W.A洛杉矶火拼的故事里我听不到我那中产阶级的黑人生活。 如果我们现实中相见，那些人，加上Biggie，Run DMC和其他那些爱吹牛逼的人，肯定会揍我一顿然后骂我faggot。他们对我这个自卑到在大学里约女孩都不敢的人来说太遥远了。不管是奢靡土豪Big Daddy Kane还是金链大哥Tupac，说唱“A面”的故事都不是我能想象的。但Digable Planets像是我梦想的B面化身。他们和其他英雄们A Tribe Called Quest, Del the Funkee Homosapien和Black Sheep组成了我心中的万神殿。我们打完了那场凄惨的比赛（输了，我们除了输没别的），拖着身体回到学校，然后我冲到了最近的唱片店买了Digable Planets的专辑。

Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space)这张专辑信息量太大了（对我来说），所以带个副标题是有道理的。我在里面听到了一个容得下我的黑人故事，一个允许“既黑又___“而非“要么黑要么___“的故事：我可以既是黑人又爱星际迷航又喜欢R.E.M又有白人（和亚裔和拉丁裔）朋友，而非只选一个否则就吊销我的黑人卡。我可以作为黑人，既爱我在派对里放的hiphop又爱我刚刚发现的爵士乐。

整张专辑的制作触发了对我对我想象中的爵士俱乐部的私密感情。当然我从没去过爵士俱乐部。那些烟雾缭绕的黑白照片、抽象艺术的专辑封面、英俊冷酷穿着利落西装的黑人讲述的的爵士故事对我来说是种成年人的酷：内在的酷，而非小孩们装的酷。爵士是风骚的，而hip-hop，像说唱歌手们反复告诉我们的那样，是硬核的。

爵士一直是黑人音乐体验中必不可少的b面：那些由爷爷辈的天才疯子们讲述的、而在他们被流行化后忽略了的黑人元素。我两面都需要，这张专辑则融合了它们。在我一遍遍循环中Reachin‘告诉我，也许我的黑人故事也有一席之地。

在派对上，我会把“Rebirth of Slick”和其他Reachin’上的歌塞给人听。Biggins/Waldkoetter常规歌单里还有：They Might Be Giants的No One Knows My Plan（让小孩们排成队跳conga舞）；R.E.M的It's the End of the World as We Know It（让小孩们齐声大叫）；Sugar的Helpless（让小孩们在墙角自己跟着唱却毫不在乎）；The Breaders的Cannonball（让小孩们翻白眼因为我们跳舞每次都放）；Arrests Development的Mama's Always on Stage （在我们放了慢歌后能让小孩们重回舞池，没一次例外）；还有二三十首常规歌曲。 Rebirth of Slick, Nickel Bags, Pacifics和Escapism (Gettin' Free)则是这套语境中的一部分。

那是一整套语境。大部分时候，我们听歌要么是因为音乐里的故事，要么音乐为我们脑中的故事衬托了氛围。作为DJ，Aaron和我在现场学会了如何根据现场的故事选歌，控制氛围的起落、快慢、动静，从而带动观众。我们搞砸的跟成功的一样多。我们很固执，坚持认为一些歌尽管观众没什么反应，它们仍然很棒，只因为它们引起了我们的共鸣，把我们的渴望展现给世界。我把Reachin‘混进现场好像在说：“这是我的故事，我的黑人身份，看看，它也可以成为你的。”

它即是也不是我的故事。Digable Planets来自纽约市，Reachin‘歌词也都是关于纽约的，对我这个生活在达拉斯、从没去过那城市的人来说，理解歌词没有CliffsNotes不行。我听过点儿爵士，但没懂到知道歌词里提及的所有人名或认出他们采样的那些家伙。

回想起来，这张专辑吸引我的原因再明显不过。Digable Planets在里面变身从高级文明降临地球的外星人。哪个十七岁小孩不觉得自己像个外星人？当时我觉得自己比大多数人更像外星人，但现在我知道了当时几百万黑人小孩都在跟自己说同样的话。Reachin‘的第一首歌，It's Good to Be Here，直接告诉听众Digable Planets是外星预言家，降临我们的世界来拯救hip-hop：“把贴纸贴在我妈车箱/上面写“我劈开了地球来重生funk“”

整张专辑描绘成Digable Planets在“魔茧俱乐部”（源于哈林著名的“棉花俱乐部”）的一场演出，首次呈现他们酷炫的新愿景。整张“Reachin‘”用很多插曲曲目把听众带回这个星际爵士俱乐部里。穿插整张专辑的吟诵让人想起了Sun Ra的星际空间：“意识是时间，意识是空间...“

让他们更显另类的是，他们把自己想象成虫子。虫子的比喻贯穿每一首歌。三个MC当然要叫蝴蝶Butterfly (Ishmael Butler)、瓢虫Ladybug Mecca (Mariana Vieira)、和金龟子Doodlebug(Craig Irving)。蚕Silkworm (King Britt)是制作人。就像魔茧俱乐部MC们在第一首歌里讲的：“这是几个怪家伙但他们确实燥得起来”。专辑没有客串MC，迷幻的包装设计则更凸显他们圈外人的身份。

但与此同时，他们也把自己描绘成最拽的圈内人。在Pacific(N.Y is Red Hot)里，Butterfly说着一个普通纽约星期日下午的故事，贴切自然得好像他是个本地向导，用言语在带你逛这座城市。Reachin‘堆砌着文化典故和晦涩的爵士采样，好像Planets要向你证明他们有多接纽约的地气。其中一首歌Jimmi Digging Cats基本就是Digable Planets在告诉你，Jimi Hendrix（这张专辑里的英雄）要是活着一定喜欢他们。这首歌不停的重复一个Hendrix旧采访的采样，显得好像在讲他们一样。换句话说，Digable Planets身处美国非裔音乐连续体中，并推动了它的发展。他们踩在大师的肩膀上，而他们也是大师。这套话语讲清楚并不容易：既扮演资深的圈内人又当古怪的圈外人。

而这套刻意凸显与hip-hop文化不同的语境只是个故事，准确地说还是个有点荒唐的故事。连我在1993都能理解一点。Reachin‘是在延续前人爵士说唱的传统，包括A Tribe Called Quest的The Low End Theory (1991), the Dream Warriors的And Now the Legacy Begins (1991), Guru带领爵士乐手和说唱明星合作的Jazzmatazz (1993–1997), 以及De La Soul的Buhloone Mindstate (1993)。说Planets发明或独占了这一切既厚脸皮又有点蠢。

确实，好像第二年Planets就要翻过这一页，展现出另一个版本的他们。他们第二张（也是最后一张）专辑，Blowout Comb，一开头Planets就用韵脚把自己和两位黑人运动的囚犯（Mumia Abu Jamal和Sekou Odinga）并列起来，而且地点不仅是定在纽约城，而是布鲁克林。他们不再是外星人，不再脱离世界。Blowout Comb（1994）没有Reachin‘的太空感或是黑人中产式的嬉皮。在这里，布鲁克林的街道、墙角和路牌至上。这个布鲁克林是黑人的：Spike Lee的Do the Right Thing里的Bedford-Stuyvesant（译注：布鲁克林街区）而非Jonathan Ames的Bored to Death。Blowout Comb充斥着革和革*的思想，从George Jackson到Five Percent Nation，从Leonard Peltier到伊斯兰国（the Nation of Islam），从Nikki Giovanni到Steve Biko。他们定义自己为外人，这次不是装酷（像B面），而是真在自豪的表达异见（像盗版盘）。

Blowout Comb大部分着眼于团结社群而非凸显不同。专辑采样比Reachin‘少得多，增加了合作音乐人。Guru和Jeru the Damaja，两位布鲁克林本地人，在Borough Check和Graffiti两首歌上贡献了重要的客串。大部分曲目由现场乐手演奏配合最少的采样，而非以采样为基础，所以专辑本身也是与基于社群的。这张专辑不是在飞碟上做的，而是在街头。

如果2019年这群外星梦想家们降临布鲁克林，他们一定认不出这个曾属于他们的区：Whole Foods超市，精品狗粮店，还有那些烦人的共享滑板车。一部分现在的我承认Blowout Comb音乐和技术上优于Reachin'。但不管它多好，Blowout Comb感觉是个那个时代的时间胶囊，而Reachin'却是超越时间的。只要黑人青少年还在，Reachin‘的主题，与众不同并以此为酷，就会一直适用。这张唱片教会了我还可以用一种更新奇、开放、带着怪念头的方式做一个黑人和美国人。它是一位老师，一位启发我讲述我自己故事、塑造自己的黑人意识的导师。Digable Planets告诉我这些都没问题，还示范给我如何快乐，不，感恩地过B面的生活。

Walter Biggin（和Daniel Couch）是33 1/3系列第124本Bob Mould的Workbook乐评书的作者。他的推特是 @walter_biggins.

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When I was 17, I thought of myself as a record. It was 1994, so I didn’t even have a turntable at the time, but a record seemed cooler, and coolness is essential at that age. Teenagers define themselves by their tastes, because they have neither the financial independence nor the emotional clarity to have the power to define themselves otherwise. Kids get into fistfights over their aesthetics and make friends because of them, too, for their aesthetics are their ethics, in a way that doesn’t happen once they’re in their 30s. Or, if they still do that, we call them arrested adolescents, teenagers who never grew up. At that age, our tastes in books, movies, music, and clothes broadcast who we are and who we’re not.

I was as music-struck as I was girl-dizzy. (A lot.) Aaron Waldkoetter and I became good friends, despite being opposite in almost every way, because we loved music. We loved sharing it with our friends, to the point of foisting it on them. Somehow, sometime during my junior year of high school, Aaron and I became the unofficial DJs of our small Dallas high school. We spun CDs and cassettes at chaperoned dances held in a downtown school-district administration building, unchaperoned parties at friends’ houses, backyards, and poolsides. Probably, it happened simply because we were the only ones who had bothered to get good speakers and a crossfader. Collectively, we had what was apparently thought of as good taste and an eclectic, oddball, and just-weird- enough music collection. People stayed on those sticky linoleum dance floors when we were spinning, even after we’d periodically fuck up by hitting the wrong button, wiring the wrong equipment together, or blowing fuses.

As records go, Aaron was the shiny “A”-side—six feet tall, blonde, blue-eyed, slim, Greek statue-cheeked, cocky. Meanwhile, I was the “B”-side—black, nerdy, awkward in gesture and statement. I failed to fit in with my fellow black students, a few of whom called me an “Oreo”—black on the outside, white on the inside.

Outside of DJing, I mostly felt less like I was a side than like a bootleg demo— unfinished, poorly made, castoff, lost. Being a B-side would have been an improvement, socially speaking. It’s no wonder my musical tastes gravitated, yes, toward popular genres (hip-hop, rock, techno—the 1990s A-sides that I longed to join), but the underground, oddball, ironic ends of those genres. That end of the pool, the B-side deep end, felt right to me.

The first time I heard Digable Planets’ “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat),” I was riding in a van full of black teens on our way to a high-school baseball game. We were the L.G. Pinkston Vikings, and we were terrible. There I was, a mediocre utility outfielder at best, listening to 100.3 JAMZ with everybody else when that rolling acoustic bass and finger- snap percussion came on. So casual, so understated, so fucking cool. Then the breakbeat kicked in, somehow even deeper than the jazz bass. Then the sly horns kicked in—not a blast so much as an insinuation. I was just getting into jazz, and this jazz-rap fusion hit me right between the ears. I was grinning ear-to-ear before Butterfly even started rapping, relaxed, low-volume, sing-songy. I didn’t understand half of what he was saying but what I did get was seductive, filled with double entendres (“She frequents the fattest joints caught underground / Our funk zooms like you hit the Mary Jane”1), cool but not flashy about it. I dug the flow, and wanted to find out more about what I wasn’t getting, because I wanted to be a part of whatever story this group was telling.

Hip-hop was the genre supposedly telling the story of my life better than any other at the time. But I wasn’t hearing the story of my middle-class blackness in N.W.A.’s tales of Los Angeles strife—if we met in real life, I was pretty sure those guys would beat my ass and call me a faggot—and the perpetual boasts of Biggie, Run DMC, and so many others rang false to a boy who thought so lowly of himself that he hardly asked a girl out on a date until college. Whether it was the flashy glamour of Big Daddy Kane or the grit-and- gold of Tupac, rap’s “A” game seemed unattainable. Digable Planets, though, seemed like the B-side avatars of my dreams. They joined such heroes as De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Del the Funkee Homosapien, and Black Sheep in my personal pantheon. We played that dismal baseball game (we lost; we always lost), we slung ourselves back to school, and I whipped my way to the closest record store to buy the Digable Planets album.

Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space) was so dense (to me) that it made sense that its title essentially featured a subtitle. There, I heard a story of blackness that I could fit inside, that allowed for “black and ________” rather than “black or ________.” As in, I could be black and love Star Trek, and I could be black and rock out to R.E.M., and I could be black and have white (and Asian, and Latinx) friends, rather than having to choose one (and only one) or risk having my black card revoked. I could be black and, as I did, love both the hip-hop I played at parties and the jazz I was just discovering for myself.

The album’s entire production evoked the dimly lit, intimate camaraderie of what I imagined a jazz club to be. I had never been in one, of course. Jazz’s story, as told by smoke-accented black-and-white photos, abstract-art record covers, and handsomely detached black men in crisp suits, was a narrative of adult coolness to me. It was adult, in that being cool was a given rather than an adolescent posturing. Jazz was voluptuous; hip-hop was, as rappers told us constantly, hard.

Jazz was and is the quintessential B-side of the black musical experience, the crazy genius granddad who’s necessary to convey versions of black life that get otherwise missed by poppier variants. I needed both sides, and here one album combined them. Reachin’ taught me, as I played it over and over and over, that maybe there was a place in the story of blackness for me.

At parties, I forced “Rebirth of Slick” and other songs from Reachin’ upon partygoers. It entered the regular Biggins/Waldkoetter rotation along with: They Might Be Giants’ “No One Knows My Plan” (which got kids to make an impromptu conga line); Prodigy’s “Fire” (which got kids raging); R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” (which got everyone yelping in unison); Sugar’s “Helpless” (which got kids singing alone in corners by themselves, not even caring); The Breeders’ “Cannonball” (which made kids roll their eyes because we played it every dance); Arrested Development’s “Mama’s Always on Stage” (which got kids back on the floor after I’d cleared it with a ballad, always, and with no exception); and two or three dozen other regular songs. “Rebirth of Slick,” “Nickel Bags,” “Pacifics,” and “Escapism (Gettin’ Free)” became part of that narrative.

It was a narrative, after all. We listen to music largely because music either tells us stories or provides atmosphere for the stories in our mind. As DJs, Aaron and I learned on the fly how to choose songs that told the night’s story, ebbing high and low, fast and slow, loud to quiet, to keep the crowd on the same page. We failed as often as we succeeded. We were stubborn, insisting that some songs were great despite the lack of reaction from the crowd, because they spoke to us, projected our desires out into the world. I foisted Reachin’ onto crowds, as if to say: “Here’s my story, here’s my blackness, here, it can belong to you, too.”

It both was and wasn’t my story. Digable Planets hailed from New York City (NYC), and Reachin’ is so NYC-specific in its lyrics that I, a Dallas native who had never been to that city, couldn’t hope to understand it all without CliffsNotes. I was getting into jazz but wasn’t knowledgeable enough to know all the musicians that they alluded to in their lyrics or to hear those cats in the beats that the Planets were sampling.

Looking back, it’s obvious why the album’s mystery was so appealing to me. In it, the Digable Planets cast themselves as aliens coming down to Earth from a more enlightened world. What 17-year-old doesn’t feel like an alien? At the time, the story I told myself was that I was more alien than most, but I know now that millions of black kids were telling themselves versions of that very same story. Reachin’s first song, “It’s Good to Be Here,” tells the listener explicitly that the Digable Planets are outsider visionaries, come down to our world to essentially save hip-hop: “Left my mom’s a note with these quotes on a trunk / It says ‘I split to Earth to resurrect the funk.’”

The whole album is intended to be seen as the Digable Planets playing a concert at the “Cocoon Club” (a play on Harlem’s famed Cotton Club), debuting their funky new vision. Throughout Reachin’ there are interludes that bring the listener back to the narrative of that interstellar jazz club. A chant throughout the record evokes the astral planes of Sun Ra: “The mind is time, the mind is space ...”

Emphasizing their alternative nature even more, they envision themselves as insects. The bug metaphors trip through every song on the record and, of course, the three MCs are Butterfly (Ishmael Butler), Ladybug Mecca (Mariana Vieira), and Doodlebug (Craig Irving); Silkworm (King Britt) is the producer. As the Cocoon Club’s MC puts it in that first song, “They’re some weird motherfuckers but they do jazz it up.” There are no guest MCs on the album, and the album’s psychedelic packaging highlights their outsider status even more.

At the same time, though, they tell the story of themselves as the hippest insiders around. In “Pacifics (N.Y. Is Red Hot),” Butterfly raps a tale of his typical relaxed Sunday in New York, and it’s so lived-in and naturally flowing that he seems like a city native, expressly willing to show you around. The cultural allusions and obscure jazz samples pile up on Reachin’, as if the Planets feel the need to remind you how plugged in they are to the scene. One song, “Jimmi Digging Cats,” is basically an excuse for the Digable Planets to posit the idea that Jimi Hendrix (a hero of the album) would have loved them, repeatedly using a sample from an old interview with Hendrix and setting it up as if it’s about them. In other words, the Digable Planets are within the natural continuum of African American popular music and they’re pushing it forward. They come from the masters but are also masters themselves. It’s a tricky narrative conceit, playing as both consummate insiders (the A-side) and weirdo outsiders (the B-side).

All of this carefully articulated distance from hip-hop culture was, of course, a story—a cock-and-bull one, to be exact. Even I kinda knew it in 1993. Reachin’ carries on in the jazz-rap tradition that includes A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory (1991), the Dream Warriors’ And Now the Legacy Begins (1991), Guru’s Jazzmatazz collaborations between jazz artists and hip-hop stars (1993–1997), and De La Soul’s Buhloone Mindstate (1993). It’s both brassy and silly for the Planets to presume that they were inventing this, or that they were alone in doing so.

Indeed, in the very next year, the Planets seemed eager to flip the record over, and show a different version of themselves. Their second (and final) album, Blowout Comb, starts with rhymes that align the Planets with two black political prisoners—Mumia Abu Jamal and Sekou Odinga—and situate themselves not just in NYC, but in Brooklyn.4 They are no longer aliens, and no longer detached from their world. Blowout Comb (1994) is not spacey or filled with black bourgeois versions of hippiedom, as was Reachin’. Brooklyn’s streets, corners, and blocks reign supreme here. And this particular Brooklyn is black— Spike Lee’s Bedford-Stuyvesant of Do the Right Thing more than Jonathan Ames’s Bored to Death. Revolutionaries and their ideas come up often in Blowout Comb, from George Jackson to the Five Percent Nation, from Leonard Peltier to the Nation of Islam, from Nikki Giovanni to Steve Biko. They’re casting themselves again as outcasts but this time not in a way that makes them hip (B-siders), but instead makes them dissident (bootlegs, and proud of it).

Mostly, Blowout Comb is concerned with connecting with its community rather than being set apart from it. There are way less samples here than on Reachin’ and way more musical collaborators. Guru and Jeru the Damaja, both Brooklyn natives, provide key guest raps on “Borough Check” and “Graffiti,” respectively. Live musicians build most of the tracks, with minimal samples woven in rather than serving as the foundations for songs. The album is thus grounded in a social space as well. This album wasn’t created in a flying saucer, but in a ’hood.

If the alien dreamers of that album landed on Brooklyn in 2019 they wouldn’t recognize that borough—with its Whole Foods Markets, boutique dog-food stores, and those annoying rental scooters—as belonging to them. Now, there’s a part of me that concedes that Blowout Comb is musically, technically, superior to Reachin’. But, as good as it is, Blowout Comb feels sonically and lyrically like a time capsule, while Reachin’ feels timeless. Reachin’s themes of alienness and striving for coolness will be universal so long as black adolescence exists. The record taught me that there were fresher, more open, and consciously oddball narratives out there about what blackness and Americanness could be. It was a teacher, a mentor that showed me that it was okay to retell my story, to imagine my blackness for myself. Digable Planets taught me that all of that was fine, and even gave me a model for living on the B-side of life, and being happy—no, grateful—for that.

Walter Biggins is, with Daniel Couch, the co-author of Workbook (#124). He tweets @walter_biggins.