De La Soul
3 Feet High and Rising
RESERVOIR MEDIA
While the cruel irony of De La Soul cofounder Dave “Trugoy the Dove” Jolicoeur dying one week before the long-awaited re-release of his innovative trio’s catalog is still sadly sinking in, the jubilation of rehearing their daisy-age hip-hop classics is wonderfully magnetic. Everything De La did—even when they were rightfully bitchy at having been financially battered for their (and producer Prince Paul’s) inventive samples—contained the joy of hippy experimentation, of longtime friendship (Trugoy, Maseo, and Posdnuos knew each other from high school), and of going wittily against the hard-nosed grain of rap’s love of machismo, money, and murder.
And while such vivid imaginings and trippy lyricism made for wild rides on everything from their bittersweet sophomore album De La Soul Is Dead through the ensuing decade’s Buhloone Mindstate, Stakes Is High, Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump, and AOI: Bionix—all available now on streaming services for the first time legally—3 Feet High and Rising is the GOAT. Not just De La’s GOAT. Hip-hop’s GOAT. One of pop music’s GOATs. And this is an opinion that I’ve personally held ever since it originally dropped in 1989.
As freethinking as Anthony Braxton or Meredith Monk, the Long Island–based threesome (with Stetsasonic member/jazz-hop producer Prince Paul and friends from the Native Tongue movement, such as Q-Tip and the Jungle Brothers) framed their talky debut in game show accouterments and ran amok. Lyrically, their rhymes were innocent without ever being childish: “The Magic Number” pulled from the edu-tainment of Schoolhouse Rock! for its friendly vibe, while “Buddy” had a ring of camaraderie in addition to its sexuality.
Elsewhere, “Tread Water” looked seriously at the destruction of our bucolic ecosystem—the very opposite of hippie-dom—while “Take It Off” made fun of rap’s love of consumerism. Though recognized as individuals, the knotted-together voices of Pos, Mase, and Trugoy made for a gorgeous, chatty triad of harmonious hip-hop—the Lambert, Hendricks & Ross of jazzily zig-zagging rap.
All that, and its was the trio’s Möbius-stripped voices in tandem with Prince Paul’s seamless sampling, bumped up against richly aromatic psychedelic/R&B-based melodies (to say nothing of their rhythmic rides through tracks such as “Jenifa Taught Me”), that made 3 Feet at least 12 feet tall and lush. Here, Hall & Oates, Steely Dan, Booker T & the MGs, Johnny Cash, Philippé Wynne, Edwin Birdsong, and The Turtles (it was the latter group’s Flo & Eddie who sued De La Soul for unlicensed sampling, forever changing their—and hip-hop’s—trajectory) lived freely under one gently jiving, roof-raising groove.
