Courtesy of the reservoir
It’s impossible to overestimate De La Soul’s impact on hip-hop music and its culture – but their seminal early albums were not widely available for decades, due to a morass of legal complications keeping them out of circulation, and, which is crucial, Away from streaming services. But today the shackles are untied, the samples cleared (or bypassed) and the albums, particularly their rousing platinum debut 1989’s 3 Feet High and Rising, are legally streamable.
The group had the great misfortune of setting a precedent for sampling laws in use today, and the dense patchwork of samples on their albums and other associated legal drama kept their music out of the mainstream for many years. But as part of its takeover of Tommy Boy Records’ catalogue, New York-based Reservoir Media cleared up the contentious quagmire surrounding the group’s first six albums and allowed the group to release them on streaming platforms (and vinyl) through Chrysalis Records. expel.
Courtesy of the reservoir
“3 feet high and ascending” is one of the most important and seminal albums in hip-hop history – but even as one of the album’s biggest hits, “The Magic Number” was featured in the credits of the blockbuster movie Spider-Man: No Way Home, the song wasn’t legally available to stream or buy. But today — and tragically less than a month after the death of the group’s co-founder Dave “Trugoy the Dove” Jolicoeur — all that is changing.
A visionary musical mashup spanning a kaleidoscopic (and ultimately very contentious) array of samples – everything from Johnny Cash to Steely Dan to the Turtles – “3 Feet High” brought the streets and the suburbs together like nothing before. While hip-hop largely had an aggressive and at times violent image — see Public Enemy, Ice-T, and NWA — 1989 already had pop-friendly rappers like DJ Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince, whose 1987 second album, He’s The DJ, I Am the Rapper” was certified triple platinum and won the first-ever Rap Grammy. But De La Soul kept the soul – both existential and literal – between the hard edges of hip-hop, with a peaceful and psychedelic atmosphere that was nonetheless not shy from the realities of urban life, a complexity that is just as vividly evident in the The trio’s lyrics are reflected in the seminal production by former Stetsasonic DJ Prince Paul.
Prince Paul loosely framed their songs with a “game show” (which played no small part in popularizing skits that had stalled so many hip-hop albums for years to come), stitching the group’s mischievous creativity into a musical one and existential journey together rejected the traditional sign of wealth or success, expressed thoughtfulness and vulnerability, and exuded exuberance and plain old fun. As the trio looked to their culture and themselves, Paul combined their insights and mischievousness with musical detours that flowed effortlessly like pieces from dozens of different jigsaw puzzles that somehow fitted perfectly together, such as “) via a dismantling of consumer trends (“Take It Off”) to an ecological call to arms (“Tread Water”). Additionally, their singles not only featured some stunning track remixes that stayed true to the original, but also featured B-sides like “Brain Washed Follower” and the “Muppet Show Theme” sample “Double Huey Skit” that further explore the themes covered The album. But perhaps most of all, it was incredible from start to finish, effortlessly catchy without capitulating to anything remotely trendy.
You would unfortunately not enjoy the same freedom from the outside or inside “De La Soul is dead” an even more ambitious yet surprisingly defensive follow-up that hit back at critics of the group’s “DAISY Age” philosophy – starting with cover art depicting an overturned pot of yellow flowers. Even as Paul deepened and diversified his collection of samples (Serge Gainsbourg, The Doors, Tom Waits), the three rappers reflect on the pitfalls of success while redoubling their commentary on cultural and social ills that many of their contemporaries were only too happy to exploit .
Although the record didn’t spawn as many hit singles as its predecessor, it was many years before “De La Soul is Dead” received its full appreciation – including from fans. Even by the group’s own standards, it was a maximalist endeavor, incorporating more skits and digressions than “3 Feet High” (this time with a children’s book theme rather than a game show) and exploring musical terrain that wasn’t as consistently enjoyable as before; Tracks like “Johnny’s Dead AKA Vincent Mason (Live from the BK Lounge)” and “Afro Connections at a Hi 5 (In the Eyes of the Hoodlum)”, even when tongue-in-cheek, lean more towards the bitterness than past-hilarity. Remixes and B-sides from the album brought some light-heartedness, like “What Yo Life Can Truly Be,” where Paul adds a chorus of Woody Woodpecker laughing at their dance-party single, “A Roller Skating Jam Named ‘Saturdays’,” and A Tribe Called Quest member Q tip for a verse.
To cite the group’s third album, “Buhloon Mindstate” More guardedly is a claim one could only make of De La Soul’s discography: at 15 tracks, it was her shortest album to date, and its interludes are either too brief or too quirky to qualify as skits in the way they are written for the two previous ones were created. But unlike, say, the deep jazz samples of A Tribe Called Quest, Paul and the trio have embraced the spirit of jazz (and some true luminaries) for a record that’s colorful, dynamic, and perhaps their most introspective. If it’s easy to forget how brave it was back then for Posdnuous to rap “Fuck being hard/Posdnuos is complicated” on “In the Woods,” listening to the entire record now just reiterates how incongruous it was with virtually everyone hip -Hop back then and why so little in the history of the genre sounds like it.
It’s a record that features legendary James Brown/P-Funk/Prince saxophonist Maceo Parker on three tracks, one of which is just an instrumental that Parker riffs on. It’s a record-breaking Japanese rapper SDP and Tagaki Kan melting the ears of American hip-hop fans with a 90-second demonstration of rap’s reach into other cultures. And it’s a record as Posdnuos and Trugoy unwind their autobiographies, synthesizing personal, professional, economic and artistic struggles with a balance of honesty and optimism that has become synonymous with their best work. In interviews, Paul says that many comedians (including Chris Rock, whose “Bigger and Blacker” he produced) say it’s the record that makes it his record of choice, despite the lack of the wacky humor he found in his previous collaborations brought in with the group.
Paul and De La Soul broke up ahead of their fourth album “Stakes are high,” who continued to explore their engagement with the recording industry and the state of hip-hop. The trio self-produced the lion’s share of the LP, a choice that unifies the record’s sound but eliminates the quirks – and possibly the personality – that Paul brought to their music. As a result, the record feels comparatively much more generic than its predecessors, even if there are more than a handful of great tracks, including “Supa Emcees”, “The Bizness” (featuring Common) and the Jay Dee-produced title track.
In the looming shadow of their work with Prince Paul, the record simply didn’t compare, but it was a necessary step for both the group and their legendary producer. While Paul is dealing with the Dr. Octagon/Gorillaz producer Dan the Automator teamed up for The Handsome Boy Modeling School, De La embarked on what may have turned out to be her most ambitious project yet: a triple album called Art Official Intelligence. Producing for themselves again – apart from some tweaks from J Dilla, chart-topping Rockwilder and Paul on the club banger Ooooh. They delivered it in chunks, starting with 2000’s Mosaic Thump and a follow-up, Bionix “, one year later.
“mosaic cut” featured a revolving door with guest stars including Redman, Xzibit, Busta Rhymes, Beastie Boys’ Mike D and Adrock, and even singer Chaka Khan. But while their subject matter was still razor sharp, the production feels like what else was going on in hip-hop at the time. For example, the Chaka Khan with “Are you okay?” could easily have been performed by Fabolous or Ja Rule; and for better or worse, the Marvin Gaye sampled “With Me” sounds like a rehearsal for Erick Sermon’s “Music,” which hit number two on the US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart a year later.
“Bionix” is similar but different: De La Soul, again handling the lion’s share of the producer alone, sticks to mid-tempo beats even as they accommodate intriguing samples from Cal Tjader and Paul McCartney (the latter making “Wonderful Christmastime” the first and only funky). time in the song’s history). They even revived skits for the record, with a thread featuring “Reverend Do Good,” a character that allowed them to provide additional social commentary. While there are a handful of tracks that stutter like the first installment, these mid-career recordings suffer from the lack of adventure, irreverence and exploration of their early releases.
Arriving in the wild after so many years, these six albums are like a time capsule from a formative era, revealing influences that – due to their long absence from the mainstream – generations of hip-hop fans were probably unaware of. What will you think? We will see. But finally, after decades of waiting (and contrary to the title of her second album), De La Soul’s music is widely available for generations to come.