De La Soul
I cherish the twilight / I maximize, my soul is the right size
I was in my early 20s when I came across Michael Azerrad’s—author of the book Our Band Could Be Your Life—Rolling Stone review of 3 Feet High & Rising where he declared, “Welcome to the first psychedelic hip-hop record.” At the time, the only rap music I listened to was what was on MTV—Eminem and Kanye West, mostly—and so De La Soul was my gateway into rap music that was psychedelic, friendly, and alternative, and so they were a foundational pillar of rap music for me. 3 Feet High & Rising was the second-highest rap album on my Top Albums of the 1980s list, and their comeback album …and the Anonymous Nobody earned a place on my Top 100 Hip-Hop Albums of the 2010s list. I love their music very much because Posdnuos, Trugoy, and Maseo seemed like they were just fun to be around, which is a word that kind of just disappeared from the hip-hop vocabulary with the rise of the cooler, more violent hardcore and gangsta strains of rap music.
And of course, De La Soul’s early records owed much to producer Prince Paul, who remains one of the most eclectic crate-diggers that rap music has ever known. Prince Paul—real name Paul Hudson—got his start early, collecting vinyl records when he was five years old, and then DJing when he was in the 5th grade, and was part of Stetsasonic—the first hip-hop band—when was still in high school. He wasn’t content to rely on funk and soul samples, but instead found bass-lines from Tom Waits, horns from Serge Gainsbourg, and hooks from Steely Dan, which he folded into other samples in a way that was far more rigorously organized—and psychedelic—than most other rap music at the time. He also introduced the skit into rap music as a means of thematically tying a record together—whereas too many skits since then are just bullshit filler—first by using the game show skits on 3 Feet High & Rising and then parodying children’s read-along books with De La Soul is Dead, culminating with using skits to help narrate a concept on his solo album A Prince Among Thieves. I consider him the best rap producer between the years of 1989 and 1993—i.e. the first three De La Soul records—before he passed that title over to the RZA who held onto it for around the same amount of time.
Alas, De La Soul have never had luck on their side. The Turtles sued them for 2.5 million in 1991 for using a 12-second sample of “You Showed Me,” forever altering the rap timeline such that labels would have to ensure sample clearance before the albums hit the shelves, part of why no one made records like 3 Feet High & Rising afterwards. (They settled out of court, and the Turtles allegedly won $1.7 million.) Then, there was the public 7-month legal battle between them and Tommy Boy when De La Soul wanted their master recordings but the two parties could not agree on the dollars and cents, including a $2 million dollar debt which Tommy Boy wanted De La Soul to cover, which is why their back catalog would go unreleased digitally until 2023. That means for the newer generation that never learned how to torrent, a big part of hip-hop history would have been completely unheard up until recently. (So on the one hand, I do understand De La threatening legal action against Marcus J. Moore’s High and Rising: A Book About De La Soul given how much legal bullshit they themselves have dealt with. On the other hand, biographies are a thing.)
The rapping on 3 Feet High & Rising gets undersold: it’s lovably goofy at its worst when Pos bites off more than he can chew on “The Magic Number,” syllable-wise (“And don’t get offended while Mase do-si-do’s your daughter”), and it might be hard to distinguish between the three voices such that “Buddy”—the only track here with rapping features—is a posse cut where it’s hard to remember you’re listening to a posse cut (they joke about how indistinguishable their voices and flows are much on their second album, “Posdnuos…the one with…the dark-skinned one”). But the rapping never feels stiff with these pulsingly-psychedelic beats. The best example of this is “Eye Know,” taking elements from songs spanning 60s’ soul (Otis Redding and Sly & the Family Stone) all the way to 70s’ jazz-rock (Steely Dan), but whereas a lesser producer might’ve really focused your attention to any one of these things, Prince Paul doesn’t let any individual sample shine such that it’s about the full experience of hearing all of them at once.
It’s too long, and it trails off after the sex skit that we can all blame them for. Afrika’s verse on “Buddy” is lame; the drum beat of “This is a Recording 4 Living in a Fulltime Era” sucks the air out of the room (so when I read on the GQ interview that Dave asserts Pos did the beat and not Prince Paul, it all made too much sense); “D.A.I.S.Y. Age” is strangely minimal and doesn’t come off, at least, not for 5 minutes. But up until that point, every track offers up pleasures, whether it’s the hard-hitting rhythm of “The Magic Number” or the bent guitar notes giving way to that indelible bass fill of “Change in Speak” or how “Jenny, lost her favorite penny / So I gave her a dollar / She kissed me … AND I HOLLERED” feels like a hook even though it only happens once on “Jenifa Taught Me (Derwin’s Revenge).” Hip-hop would never be this much fun again.
They didn’t like being branded as hippies, so follow-up De La Soul is Dead marks the end of the short-lived “D.A.I.S.Y. Age,” announced as much with the cover of a smashed pot of flowers. One way to consider De La Soul’s albums are reactions: Stakes is High reacted to where rap music was going; The Grind Date is a reaction to how the AOI records were received; this album was a reaction to 3 Feet High & Rising’s popularity. The samples are notably less bright, and the overall atmosphere is darker and anxious, culminating in “Millie Pulled a Pistol On Santa”, about a girl who suffers sexual abuse at the hands of her father that ends with her shooting him as he’s working as the mall Santa, a song that would not have appeared on 3 Feet High. Even the production is far scarier: Prince Paul’s beat on that song makes me think of RZA’s work on Raekwon’s “Ice Cream.”
If you subtract the tracks that are designated as the intro and skits, plus the fake radio station WRMS ones, and both “Pease Porridge” and “Shwingalokate” (the most boring songs on the album), then you’re left with a far more attractive and tighter 20-track album, but please do not scotch “Johnny’s Dead AKA Vincent Mason” or “Kicked Out the House” while you are doing this. The former is equally hilarious as it is touching as Dove yells ““JOHNNY!!!!!! YOU GOT A BULLET IN YOUR HEAD, BOI” over pounding staccato octaves played like his ‘pianist mate’ had never seen a piano before (recalling the ‘bridge’ of “Jenifa Taught Me” from their previous album). As for “Kicked Out the House”, it’s a 2-minute house song that’s introduced as “In no way are we trying to disrespect any sort of house or club music, but we’re just glad that we’re not doing it. And if we were, this is how it would go,” before introducing a synth line that sounds like it were lifted from Kraftwerk.
“Oodles of O’s,” “A Roller Skating Jam Named ‘Saturdays,’” “Bitties in the BK Lounge,” and “Keepin’ the Faith” are all songs that rank very high in their career. They get ambitiously alliterative on “Oodles of O’s” over Tom Waits’ bass-line from “Diamonds on My Windshield”; catchy on “Saturdays” thanks to Vinia Mojica’s hook and Q-Tip’s “Girl meets boy on Thursday night / Boy was high, girl fly like kite” verse; funny on “Bitties in the BK Lounge,” which is less a song than some comedy skits. (There’s a remixed version of “Saturdays” that also adds other Tribe member Phife Dawg and Dres from Black Sheep. It’s basically a completely different song, but Q-Tip’s verse is better than the original song, “Saturday is, um, rolling around” is a great line, particularly how Q-Tip does the “um” to make it sound like he’s actually rolling around.) “Keepin’ the Faith” is my favorite song here because of that melody that I can whistle for days, a pitch-shifted sample of Bob James’ “Sign of the Times” that just locks perfectly with the “Walk This Way” drums. Plenty of other good songs besides those ones, because it’s even more of a treasure trove than last time.
I’ll concede that the overall atmosphere isn't as unique as 3 Feet High & Rising, and only “Pass the Plugs” is reminiscent of that album’s psychedelia thanks to its warbled, jittery sample. In fact, you could say there isn’t an atmosphere over the album’s 73-minute run-time at all. Instead, we get an album that’s more mature; by turns darker, funnier and sadder than their debut. Were I to make a 90s’ list—no, stop, you can’t make me—I’d rank this one very high.
Bulhoone Mind State should be far more recognized as the greatest jazz rap album released in 1993, which was the year of jazz rap: I’d rank it over Digable Planets’ debut and A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders (only just). Because it’s weirder than both. De La Soul were always outsiders—which is why their attempts to be insiders after Prince Paul left them on their own fall flat—and they embrace that fact here more than any other album. The first proper song comes with a funky guitar sample that announces the return of the funny, friendly De La Soul, but the groove ends abruptly halfway through to a disorienting effect, as if this were Surfer Rosa. By the time things seem to be back on track, the fifth song is a 5-minute song wherein the rappers don’t even show up, and the very next song is given to Japanese rap trio Scha Dara Parr. If only it had the balls to get stay weird after that, alas! But certainly weird by early-90s east coast rap standards.
“I Be Blowin’” brings in Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley and Pee Wee Ellis to actually play some jazz (whereas you wouldn’t know Ron Carter was actually playing on Tribe’s Low End Theory), and then “I Am I Be” has De La Soul rap over alongside them. On that track, Posdnuos does some of his best rapping ever, beginning by casually taking down the music industry, “I be the new generation of slaves / Here to make papes to buy a record exec rakes the pile of revenue I create / But I guess I don’t get a cut cuz my rent’s a month late,” to the flip of the adage, “I am an early bird but the feathers are black / So the apples that I catch are usually all worms.” (He also briefly addresses why the Native Tongues collective fell apart, for anyone curious.)
This would be the last De La Soul album produced by Prince Paul, and his eclectic sampling—“3 Days Later” serves up a pitch-shifted horn hook over garbage can drums, while the “Dave Has a Problem” skit is an excuse for him to look for a sitar through his Ritchie Valens records—will be sorely missed moving forward. Paul asserts that De La Soul “did a lot better without my presence,” but—like Eno post-Roxy Music—I chalk that up to modesty: I think they lost the only thing that made them special in the first place.
That’s part of why I assuredly do not consider Stakes is High to be part of De La Soul’s classic run. De La Soul overestimate their talents without Prince Paul and produce the record themselves, trading samples for live instrumentation playing simple, unimaginative chord progressions that makes the 70-minute album feel terribly unvaried. The stakes might have been high, but the actual risks taken are low; most of the production is a thick bass and easy going beat looped through inexplicably long track lengths, and maybe an extra keyboard sprinkled in for good measure; “Itzsoweezee (Hot)” coasts for 5 minutes. The exceptions are all from outside producers: Spearhead X creates a live party vibe for “Dinninit”; Skeff Anselm cooks up these strange and beautiful beeps throughout “Big Brother Beat”; a young J Dilla contributes to the title track. The only De La Soul-handled song here that I think of fondly for its production is closer “Sunshine” due to the underwater-psychedelia treatment of the vocal hook, but the verses just plod along mercilessly over a farty-synthetic bass that I doubt sounded good in ‘96.
They bottomed out at the start of the millennium with the ‘Art Official Intelligence’ albums. Mosaic Thump is their worst album. “With AOI Pt 1,” Dave explained, “it was a relaxed album. It was a getting back into being easy again and not having so many messages or us having to hone in on a particular topic or theme. It was about partying and having a good time. For us that was cool because we had never done that.” Nothing wrong with partying, of course, or Doggystyle wouldn’t hold up as a classic rap album, but they don’t party convincingly. The production is mostly handled by De La again with some exceptions like “My Writes” (co-produced by Madlib), “Oooh.” (co-prod. by Prince Paul), and “Thru Ya City” (co-prod. by J Dilla). But befitting where rap music was in 2000, the beats are bigger, but also more blocky, with a lot more of the previous album’s farty-sounding synths and basses. This includes “I.C. Y’all” and “U Don’t Wanna B.D.S.” and even “Oooh.” The drums of “The Art of Getting Jumped” are just horrifying. There are a few highlights, like J Dilla’s summery keyboard chords on “Thru Ya City” trying to imitate marimbas, or Mr. Khaliyl’s insistent acoustic guitar line that sounds like it’s skipping on “Set the Mood.” The Beastie Boys collaboration “Squat!” is just heartbreaking considering how both groups ruled rap music a decade previously and are now rapping on a beat this nondescript.
Bionix has a few songs that are way better than anything on Mosaic Thump thanks in particular to the rather uniquely De La move of sampling Paul McCartney’s Christmas single and Serge Gainsbourg (whom Prince Paul had already sampled on De La Soul is Dead). “Watch Out” is boom bap using South American steel drums where Posdnuos brings the goods, “Still standing like abandoned buildings / In the southern part of the BX, can old school it like a T-Rex,” while closer “Trying People” has some gorgeous colour from its “Flying” sample that actually sounds like it’s suspended in the air, and those horns that De La Soul has always been good with. All of that gets balanced out by the appearance of “Pawn Star,” the worst song their name is attached to.
Art Official Intelligence was slated for a trilogy but given these two albums they wisely pivoted with the corporate apology album The Grind Date, an album with no R&B hooks, no skits, and no filler in its twelve songs, with features from Common, Ghostface Killah, Flavor Flav, and MF DOOM, and beats from J Dilla, 9th Wonder, Madlib, and a young Jake One. It sounds like it should be good, but the album also sucks because there’s no personality: it’s their one album that sounds least like what a De La Soul album should be. I’m sure “Rock Co.Kane Flow” sounded good at the time, but it’s such a stilted banger now, and the high-pitched sustain of “Days of Our Lives” would have only been improved if the rest of the beat were more filled out. See similarly: Ghostface Killah’s Apollo Kids, the course-correction after he lost favour with the R&B Ghostdini album.
Other than guesting on the second and third Gorillaz albums (PSA: the only good ones), De La Soul kept quiet for almost a decade. Posdnuos and Trugoy donned new aliases in Jacon Barrow and Deen Witter respectively and released First Serve without Maseo to little fanfare; it’s a concept album akin to their mentor’s A Prince Among Thieves without the tragedy, but the story is hard to follow, and Chokolate and Khalid’s beat don’t make it worth hearing in the first place.
So 2016’s …and the Anonymous Nobody, funded through Kickstarter, is an actual comeback album that deserved far more hype, and though some part of me wants to blame fellow Native Tongues’ A Tribe Called Quest for releasing their (better) comeback album that same year, We Got It From Here didn’t arrive until late 2016, and I remember nobody fucking with …and the Anonymous Nobody in the interim. My advice? Take it as a low-key Gorillaz album and not a rap album.
Centerpiece “Drawn”—featuring Little Dragon, possibly introduced to the group via Gorillaz when both featured on Plastic Beach—doesn’t even feature rapping until the last minute. Instead, it’s just a plucky little darling while Yukimi Nagano’s voice floats over. Instruments are introduced, poking their head in the recording room and leaving: in-and out drumming, an electric guitar showing up with a single note… and that’s almost the entire song. Posdnuos does swing by near the end, and his verse is touching, and the lines “Two words: I’m mortal, but the fans slid ‘em both together and removed the apostrophe” would be fitting in a swan song album if this turns out to be the last of their careers.
The failures of this album aren’t like the lame hardcore posturing of their clueless 2000-2004 era because you can see what they swung for even if they missed: “Snoopies” brings in David Byrne but the choruses feel grafted in; I wish they realized they didn’t need an R&B singer like Usher to belt out the choruses of “Greyhound” or even its boring-ass drum beat and just let the words carry over the fog, because those words are worth hearing (“Ride on the merry-go-round of four drinks and two white lines / Go fast with the fast life so she needs more / One fun fix, now a daily chore”); the Damon Albarn assist sounds like an alt-rap version of Coldplay (maybe if Albarn handled the “We’re still here now” hook instead of De La, who can’t carry the tune). (Surprisingly, these collaborations fail while the 2 Chainz one ends up…being a highlight?) Don’t discount the short “CBGB’s” whose humourous non-sequitur ending is one that I’ve muttered around for the past 8 years. The album isn’t solid, which implies some sort of cushy consistency. Stakes is High and Grind Date are solid. They’re also boring. Anonymous Nobody is interesting, which De La Soul has always known was the far better place to be.
3 Feet High & Rising - A De La Soul is Dead - A+ Bulhoone Mindstate - A- Stakes is High - B Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump - C+ AOI: Bionix - C+ The Grind Date - C+ First Serve - C ...and the Anonymous Nobody - B+