The most inventive, assured, and playful debut in hip-hop history, 3 Feet High and Rising not only proved that rappers didn't have to talk about the streets to succeed, but also expanded the palette of sampling material with a kaleidoscope of sounds and references culled from pop, soul, disco, and even country music. Weaving clever wordplay and deft rhymes across two dozen tracks loosely organized around a game-show theme, De La Soul broke down boundaries all over the LP, moving easily    [ read more ]

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De La Soul came storming back after four years of recording inactivity -- and practically a decade out of the hip-hop limelight -- with a promise to release three full albums in a series they dubbed Art Official Intelligence. From the first volume, Mosaic Thump comes some hip-hop/soul with "U Can Do (Life)." Posdnuos' raps are occasionally thoughtful and clever, but he seems obsessed with being as hardcore as DMX or Jay-Z. There are a few solid productions by outsiders (Ad Lib's {&"M   [ read more ]

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The last album of De La Soul's creative prime, Buhloone Mindstate was also their last with producer Prince Paul. After the claustrophobic De La Soul Is Dead, Mindstate is a partial return to the upbeat positivity of 3 Feet High and Rising, though not its wildly colorful invention. Instead, Buhloone Mindstate takes a calmer, more laid-back approach -- the music is often more introspective, and the between-song skits have been jettisoned in favor of a tighter focus. The surrealism of {^Bu   [ read more ]

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The best thing about De La Mix Tape: Remixes, Rarities and Classics is that it's easy access to some rare B-sides, appearances on other artists' albums, and promo tracks. Unfortunately, it's not all of them, but the big find is the instrumental B-side "Piles and Piles of Demo Tapes Bi-Da Miles," with its rock-solid groove and crazy flute solo. The rest of the so-so rare tracks are upstaged by the group's appearances with other artists, including the great "More Than U Know" from Prince Paul's {^   [ read more ]

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On their notorious second album, De La Soul went to great lengths to debunk the daisy-age hippie image they'd been pigeonholed with, titling the record De La Soul Is Dead and putting a picture of wilting daisies in a broken flowerpot on the cover. Critics and fans alike were puzzled as to why the group was seemingly rejecting what had been hailed as the future of hip-hop, and neither the reviews nor the charts were kind to the album. It isn't that De La try to remake their sound here -- Dead    [ read more ]

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VINYL FORMAT. De La Soul's second album, originally released in 1991, was initially received poorly by the press and their fans due to its immediate rejection of the 'daisy-age' image created by their debut LP. In the years since, however, it has come to be accepted as a stone classic that may even surpass the feel-good jams of Three Feet High And Rising with its expansive scope and more diverse subject matter (drug addiction, incest, poseurs, in addition to the more expected, light-hearted material)   [ read more ]

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De La Soul were interrupted just before they could deliver the third volume in their AOI series -- projected to be a DJ album -- to Tommy Boy. (The label perhaps bailed out from a 15-year relationship precisely because the group was going to release such a commercially bankrupt title, one that was planned instead to appear on an independent label run by Maseo.) De La Soul quickly realized they couldn't go ahead with the plan after signing their AOI label to Sanctuary, so they   [ read more ]

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"No longer backed by record companies but back by popular demand" raps Posdnuos in "Freedom Train," the penultimate song on De La Soul's label-less mixtape Impossible Mission: TV Series, Pt. 1, a collection of older previously unreleased tracks, as well as new material, all of which helps to firmly establish the group as one of hip-hop's legends. Not that Impossible Mission compares to 3 Feet High and Rising or De La Soul Is Dead or even AOI: Bionix, because it doesn't -- those we   [ read more ]

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From the days of the earliest Cold Crush battle tapes, live hip-hop on record has been a sketchy proposition. There's simply no way to transmit the energy and community feeling of a live show onto wax or tape or disc, and sludgy audio quality has rarely convinced anyone other than the hardcore to risk an investment. For reasons unknown, De La Soul, those ambassadors of hip-hop exuberance despite their professorial inclinations, were gifted by Tommy Boy/Rhino with a release of one of their    [ read more ]

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