Craig Irving didn’t grab the mic until his freshman year of college at Howard University. There, he met a Philly kid named DJ Trouble Trev and they started a group called the O.S.A.G.E. (Out for Sex And Gettin’ Exotic) Crew, named after the West Philly street where the MOVE house was bombed in 1985.

After graduation, Irving returned home to Philly—where, as a teen in the ’80s, he’d tape Lady B’s rap radio shows—and met a like-minded MC named Ishmael Butler who was living with his grandmother near West Oak Lane and working at Reading Terminal. “We sat around my grandmother’s house [in Germantown] listening to music for hours,” says Irving, then a member of the Dread Poet’s Society.

Soon after, Irving became Doodlebug. Ishmael became Butterfly. Mary Ann Vieira, an MC who was Irving’s girlfriend at the time, became Ladybug. Digable Planets was born.

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