I was reading some stuff the other day about the influence of De La Soul on hip hop in general and it got me to thinking how I came about my own super nerd fan status of the Plugs and here are a few things I can remember..........
De La was the first group to tear me away from Ice T. For some reason, at that time, he was all I would listen to as far as rap went. I was really into "Swass" by Sir Mix A Lot too. Anyhow............"3 Feet High And Rising" came out and I slept on it for a good long time. Finally, I decided to check it out and was totally blown away. I couldn't believe what I was hearing and for the weeks to come that was all I would listen to. That album totally shifted my focus of hip hop fandom from angry gangster rap to more cerebral stuff. I ended up going on crazy music hunting binges and in a pretty short amount of time, became familiar with all of the Native Tongue catalog and history. It all had and air of light heartedness to it even when it was markedly more conscious, like with The Jungle Brothers.
I'll credit that shift to steering me towards my creative outlets that I still have to this day. I became a music lover as soon as I heard that album. I recognized the Ben E. King sample of "Stand By Me" on "A Little Bit Of Soap" and thought it was so incredible that such a beautiful love song could be turned into a minute long joke song about smelly people. That's really all I needed to get hooked at age 14.
So I started buying records. That immediately became cool among me and my friends and we hit the few shops we could go to with gusto. I still buy any thing with De La's name on it and I still have those records from back in the day too.
When "De La Soul Is Dead" came out (on the same day as "Original Gangster" by Ice T) I picked it up and listened to it from start to finish and didn't like most of it..too slow, a little confusing, and most of all, vastly different from 3 Feet High. I was expecting more of the same and was pretty shocked when that album didn't deliver. The song I really hated was "A Rollerskating Jam Named Saturdays" and looking back, I can't even remember why. Over the next few months, I would keep going back to it more and more and now it's the summer jam of all time. Really. Here's the video, which is pretty awful. Watch out for some day glo, rollerBLADES, and crappy video quality. The song is great though.
So De La expanded my musical horizons by adding depth and emotion that wasn't common on most hip hop records and I was finding all sorts of great music to listen to that was in a similar vein. I'm pretty sure that the same year that De La released "Buhloone Mindstate" , A Tribe Called Quest released "Midnight Maurauders", Wu Tang came out and crushed everything and lets not forget Nas and "Illmatic"
Anyhow...."Buhloone Mindstate" came out and once again, I wasn't ready for what I was hearing. There was a depressing mood to the record and I really thought that De La was going to break up. The music was upbeat but if you really listened to the lyrics, they were anything but. There were also large passages of the album where there was no rapping going on and not with the little skits they'd become famous for either. There are actual songs in the middle of the record that no one raps on, or that feature someone who raps in Japanese and not one dude from De La raps on. I didn't know what the fuck to do with myself. I told anyone who would listen that it was all over for the Native Tongues (and it kinda really was) and that De La was using that album to throw that last shovelful of dirt on the grave. (and they kinda really were)
Since those days, that holds it's place as my favorite De La album because of all of those things that I hated so much. I hadn't looked at them as moving forward and trying new things because I hadn't ever looked at them as artists. They were just rappers. I felt that way about all rappers until I came around on this record.(which took about a year)
There's a pattern here. Da La puts out a record and I hate it, then I love it because it shows me other directions music can go. This causes me to look for more music and build on that. That's what makes me love their music so much. It actually taught me things that were valuable.
After that, money rap came heavily into play and De La didn't really do anything that I can remember. Everyone was getting VERY into name brands, money, jewelry and the other trappings of life in a rap video. I was too. There was a time where I literally would not wear clothes that were not approved name brands. I thought that that's how it was supposed to be. I had to have all of the fly Polo and Nautica and DKNY and Tommy and Guess gear that I could get my hands on. I was PLAYING myself like a sucker. Looking back on those times, I don't feel very proud of myself or anything that I accomplished.
The shift in opinions that I went through to cause me to come to my senses is an unrelated story but it did happen around the same time that De La released "Stakes Is High" so I put those two things together. During the few years that De La was not around, I along with the rest of hip hop (and it was EVERYONE...don't front.) was behaving pretty foolishly and many, many of them continue doing so. Look at Soulja Boy.
Now, I'd like to state for the record that I enjoy A LOT of music that many would label as ignorant or shitty or being part of all of the things that I was going on about earlier. But the fact of the matter is, when Big Boi from Outkast talks about having money, or whatever, I just see that as normal rap bragging and boasting because he's far more diverse that that as an artist and really does more than just that. Some of it I like simply because it makes me wanna dance. There has always been a place for stuff like that in hip hop and it will always be there, but when EVERYONE is doing it and all you hear on the radio is shit like that, that is where the problem lies.
It just can't ALL be that materialistic. There has to be some kind of content to make people think about and listen to what you're saying because after the club banger gets old, the money is gonna run out.
Ugh. I made myself depressed.Anyhow.....here's that link I promised. After the interview there's a great mixtape you can download that basically has every classic De La jam on it
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