Maseo obliged by suggesting they sample Parliament’s 1979 hit single “(Not Just) Knee Deep” for “Me Myself and I.” Paul agreed and flipped the track into an irresistible crowd mover. Rolling Stone declared that the album was “one of the most original rap records ever to come down the pike, the inventive, playful 3 Feet High And Rising stands staid rap conventions on their def ear.” It was an idea they explored more explicitly on their fable, “Tread Water.” There were animals, squeaky organs, friendly humming—at the time, journalist Harry Allen called it the most African song he’d heard in hip-hop—but “Tread Water” also offered perhaps the most ambitious hope on the record, that De La’s music might help us all elevate our heads above the water. Consider that in the preceding 12 months, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Straight Outta Compton, Critical Beatdown, Lyte As a Rock, and In Full Gear had made a massive impact in hip-hop. Genres: East Coast Hip Hop, Conscious Hip Hop. More by 1173654822. When Jenifa inevitably moved on, Pos dropped his head in shame: “Don’t flaunt that the candy’s good, unless you can get plenty.”, As buzz built in advance of the album’s release, the label gave the group’s image a full makeover. Tommy Boy signed them to an album contract soon after and De La Soul began building their sonic world on a shoestring budget of $25,000. They trudged through low-energy sets anticipating the inevitable conclusion, having to perform “Me Myself & I,” as if their biggest hit had been their biggest mistake. 5 Can U Keep a Secret. If Black complexity had been the meta-message lost in De La’s big crossover, abstraction, abjection, and humor were the winning trifecta of 3 Feet High and Rising. At the same time, Posdnous, Trugoy, and Mase were putting together “Plug Tunin’,” a song that had evolved out of a live routine the crew rocked over the “Impeach the President” break. Early concepts for 3 Feet High and Rising involved music being transmitted from Mars by three microphone plugs (each one representing a member of the group). Common are speakers who honor the scroll Trugoy decided he had had enough. The sampler vaulted hip-hop out of its inferiority complex. The culture wars were raging all around them, the central fact defining N.W.A.’s work. The following contestants, how are you doing, contestants? 1 Intro. 2. The current regime rewards the least creative class—lawyers and capitalists—while destroying cultural practices of passing on. and the West Coast gangsta rap and that of De La Soul and the Native Tongues’ ”completely unthreatening” “message of positivity.” De La never asked to be the saviors of hip-hop, much less to answer for all the supposed pathologies that critics wanted to put on Black masculinity and Black popular culture. Style is surely our own thing Scrolls written daily creates a new sound Thinly disguised under a layer of humor, their lyrical themes ranged from true love ("Eye Know") to the destructive power of drugs ("Say No Go") to Daisy Age philosophy ("Tread Water") to sex ("Buddy"). De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising was released on March 3, 1989 through Tommy Boy Records. Even KRS, who had just dropped what would come to be recognized as one of the best albums in hip-hop history, said it couldn’t compare what De La Soul had just made. Sean Cannon posted March 15, 2019. I mean, every damn photo shoot you could bet there was a florist hanging around with flowers. Taking an eraser, he wiped off all their dates, and wrote instead: “De La Soul is Dead.” The guys laughed. 105206-2, D 30169. Sampling—De La Soul sampling Parliament, Obama sampling Lincoln, Melania sampling Michelle—is nothing less than the American pastime, the creative reuse of history amid the tension between erasure and emergence that is central to the struggle for the republic. The pair didn't just use those samples as hooks or drumbreaks -- like most hip-hop producers had in the past -- but as split-second fills and in-jokes that made some tracks sound more like DJ records. Pos’s production on “Eye Know” put Steely Dan into conversation with Otis Redding and the Mad Lads, his work on “Say No Go” Hall and Oates with the Detroit Emeralds. Includes printed paper inner sleeve with cartoon and credits. The musical chorus of “Potholes in My Lawn” pointed not only to Parliament’s 1970 debut Osmium, but to the African American roots of country and western music. In the end, only De La Soul made it out of the classroom and into the waiting world. 4 Cool Breeze on the Rocks. More broadly, 3 Feet High and Rising helped secure a new alignment of hardcore street heads with an emerging global audience of fans, the foundation of the soon-to-be-named “hip-hop nation.” Thirty years later, it remains one most influential records of the storied class of 1988-89. 3 Change in Speak. By the end, Mase and Paul were scratching snippets at a fast and furious rate—Steinski, Syl Johnson, and Eddie Murphy all fly by before Johnny Cash suddenly drops in to give the album its title: “How high’s the water, mama? De La Soul - 3 Feet High and Rising By 1173654822. Printed on the flip were helpful instructions for radio DJs needing to know what to play: “Plug Side.” From this odd detail, De La Soul developed an album concept: They were transmitting their music live from Mars through microphones—Pos on Plug One, Trugoy on Plug Two. The tracks became dense with info, opened up to jarring risk and surprise. Along with their Native Tongues peers, they were as generative as sunshine, spawning fertile new scenes around the world, including LA’s True School, the Bay Area’s indie underground, Atlanta’s Dungeon Family, Detroit’s network of Dilla and his acolytes, and subsequent generations of self-identified indie rappers, including Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and Common. Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. On their first national tour, the crew seemed to recoil from their audiences. Worse were the physical threats. 7 min read. Intro (De La Soul/Lyricist Lounge Vol. Today’s debate over sampling is mostly mind-numbingly narrow, shaped largely by big-money concerns that are ahistorical, anti-cultural, and anti-creative. Even that honor prompted no action from Warner Brothers. Order the two-LP clear splatter edition now. 1:41 0:30. 1 on the R&B charts. De La Soul’s second single, “Potholes In My Lawn,” was a battle rhyme refracted through the brutal status consciousness of the ‘burbs. But then Pos pulled from his father’s collection a rare doo-wop record by the Invitations called “Written on the Wall.” (Later, Tommy Boy stirred a small frenzy among the nascent crate-digging community when it offered $500 to the first person who could identify the sample. Over a two-month period, they learned how to work the expensive studio gear as they made the record. Four years before, Marley Marl had accidentally unlocked the power of the sampler—a technology that allowed time to be captured and manipulated. TBLP 1019; Vinyl LP). Their aim had simply been to make some space to raise their own voices. If it was easy to believe the revolution was here from listening to the rapping and production on Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, with De La Soul the Daisy Age seemed to promise a new era of positivity in hip-hop. "3 Feet High and Rising and all those early albums are special to us and unfortunately, the business that's behind them is horrible," Trugoy the Dove told Sway. Just as hip-hop was firmly establishing itself as the most avant of pop’s garde, the best of their peers—from smooth operator Big Daddy Kane to Blastmaster KRS-One to Living Colour’s Vernon Reid—showed up at their release party to salute their achievement. Differs from the Specialty Records Corporation pressing 3 Feet High And Rising. Featuring production by Prince Paul, utilizing around 60 samples from every nook that had a cranny (and then one from its granny), the sheer number of samples means another album like this will never happen again (but we can dream). As thoughtful and opinionated students of the culture, their wainscoted suburban rooms were strewn with rare dusty records plundered from their parents’ collections, and they financed their passions as janitors who came to their jobs rocking gold fronts. Questlove told New York Times reporter Finn Cohen, “I mean, 3 Feet High and Rising is very much in danger of being the classic tree that fell in the forest that was once given high praise and now is just a stump.” We are left to ask: as history is made and remade, who can be heard in America? Post-hip-hop intellectual property law rests on racialized ideas of originality, and preserves the vampire profits of publishing outfits like Bridgeport Music, that sue sampling producers while preventing artists like George Clinton from sharing their music with next-generation musicians, and large corporations like Warner Brothers that continue to disenfranchise Black genius. 3 Feet High and Rising, an Album by De La Soul. Their album would be full of inside jokes, invented slang (“A phrase called talk” was their rhyme style, “Public Speaker” was a dope emcee, “Buddy” was a hot body, and “Strictly Dan Stuckie” meant “awesome”), and an odd mix of preoccupations ranging from TV to Aesop’s fables to Luden’s cough drops to, of course, sex. It marked the first of three full-length collaborations with producer Prince Paul, which would become the critical and commercial peak of both parties. But success threatened the group. Tracks. The skits and interludes poked fun at more of their obsessions—funky smells (“A Little Bit of Soap”), fashion trends (“Take It Off”), and porn flicks (“De la Orgee”). Was knuckling up and taking down heads from Rhode Island to Cincinnati Denver. Evolved away from Old School party-rocking and new School realism ambitions on their national... Excellence. ) Rising '' s 1992 debut the Chronic. ) sampled hip-hop... 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