De La Soul

Long considered a cornerstone of hip-hop history, the Long Island trio's catalog hits streaming today, just weeks after emcee Trugoy the Dove's sudden ...

The dispute was resolved in 2021 after Tommy Boy was [acquired](https://www.reservoir-media.com/reservoir-brings-de-la-souls-iconic-catalog-to-streaming-platforms/) by Reservoir Media. Fans were understandably pissed; the catalog’s streaming debut was [postponed](https://pitchfork.com/news/de-la-soul-catalog-streaming-postponed-amid-royalties-dispute/) amid the outcry. [50th anniversary](https://www.avclub.com/the-3-best-moments-from-that-huge-grammys-hip-hop-tribu-1850076721) this year, a new, integral piece of the genre’s history has finally landed on streaming. “Because of that reason, they decided not to clear stuff.” Trugoy The Dove, died suddenly at the age of 54. Now, 1989's 3 Feet High and Rising, 1991's De La Soul Is Dead, 1993's Buhloone Mindstate, 1996's Stakes Is High, 2000's Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump, and 2001's AOI: Bionix are all available for streaming.

This major win for De La Soul also comes at a tragic time for the group following the death of David “Trugoy” Jolicoeur in mid-February. The rap legend's ...

And we were always doing this for De La Soul and we were always doing this for the fans and now we’re doing it for Dave and his legacy as well. And so we struck a deal that puts the masters in the hands of De La Soul and the future is in their hands. They were just sitting there, and they were never going to see the light of day without a lot of shifting. It was De La Soul who went to rights holders and said, “We want to get this right.” And they engage with hundreds of parties out there to get the rights that they needed to distribute their music. We’re going to support all of the marketing initiatives, and we’re going to help press up vinyl and have a whole rollout of vinyl plans over the next remaining year. And we knew that we had to empower De La Soul to do this themselves. And De La Soul was just sitting on the shelf, and it was always something that we knew we had to figure out whenever we were going after Tommy Boy. And we presented a plan going forward about how we can get this music out to the generation that’s never streamed it, get it out to new generations that have never even bought vinyl or CDs, and really get what we think is some of the most important hip-hop music ever created out worldwide on the streaming services. And so what we did was we found a way forward to work together, to solve the issues that were keeping it from streaming services. It wasn’t the reason why we did Tommy Boy, but it was definitely a side piece that we needed to figure out. We talked to Reservoir Media President and COO Rell Lafargue about brokering the deal that brought De La Soul’s catalog to digital service providers (DSPs) and their plans for the future. “And I think, with Dave’s passing, it was more important than ever that we kept true to what we needed to do,” he said.

When David "Trugoy the Dove" Jolicoeur of influential rap group De La Soul died last month, fans who wished to hear their work on music streaming services ...

De La Soul has “naturally been that group for everyone,” Mercer said. “The first call we made was to De La Soul,” Reservoir executive Faith Newman said after the acquisition. In a heartfelt tribute to Jolicoeur posted on Instagram last week, Mason wrote, “I’m extremely upset at the fact that you’re not here to celebrate and enjoy what we worked and fought so hard to achieve.” Ownership of their music catalog changed hands several times over the last two decades, and Mercer, Mason and Jolicoeur were outspoken about issues they had with the terms of their Tommy Boy contract. “We’ve been very resilient, even being a group that didn’t have our music up [on streaming platforms]. The Tommy Boy music catalog was

Best De La Soul songs: 10 hits and deep cuts to stream from the hip-hop trio.

Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Queen Latifah, Monie Love and Jungle Brothers (1989) [debut](https://beats-rhymes-lists.com/facts/mf-doom-recording-debut-on-3rd-bass-the-gas-face/) of Doom) was sampled for the De La Soul track “Oodles of O’s” more than a decade earlier. Native Tongues were one of the all-time great crews in the hip-hop storybook. This 3 Feet highlight is an early example of the genius of producer Prince Paul and his crafty deployment of samples. Here, he brings together 10 different songs — including snippets of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way,” Bob Marley’s “Could You Be Loved” and “Just A Touch Of Love” by Slave – to build an unstoppable groove. If “Buddy” was a declaration of unity among the Native Tongues crew, this somber missive from 1993’s jazzy Buhloone Mindstate reveals fractures in the bond keeping the crew together. One of Dove’s hottest moments on the mic was his indelible list of grievances in the second verse of the J Dilla-kissed title cut to De La’s 1996 classic Stakes Is High. After a 12-year break between albums (although the period did see them collaborate with the Gorillaz on the top 20 Hot 100 hit “Feel Good Inc.”), De La returned in 2016 with And The Anonymous Nobody…. And while the tune is a perfect conduit into the heart of hip-hop’s D.A.I.S.Y. — on Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music and the like, giving a brand new generation of music fans the opportunity to discover the humor, intelligence and poignancy De La Soul brought to the table for decades. A cruel twist of fate, but the newfound availability of their catalog will no doubt only punctuate the importance he had on the hip-hop landscape. Unfortunately, the long-overdue campaign transpires as De La Soul copes with the Feb.

After years absent from the digital music landscape, what does it feel like to listen to one of hip-hop's most storied groups with fresh ears?

With that in mind, it can feel urgent to listen to these records, and to treasure those like them, before the artists who made them are lost to history. Flooding the market with six albums caters to the all-or-nothing style of consumption, similar to how people burn through their favorite show whenever the entire collection is available on demand. It hurts that we're forced to talk about Trugoy in the past tense when he should have been able to be lauded and praised in the present. When you go back and listen to the early run for the first time, you recognize that you're not just hearing one of the best rap groups ever; you're getting a lesson about how hip-hop itself was born, how it survived in the past, how it functions at its most imaginative and how the artform can live on in the future. The iconic "Me Myself & I" video shows them being bullied for their "hippie dress," while simultaneously rapping with pride about refusing to copy the other ways that their peers performed and existed. De La Soul is important, not only to the purists and old heads that have grown up with them for decades but to a newbie now blessed to experience the group for the first time. You could boil down the De La ethos to one Posdnuos couplet from "Dinninit": "I'm pourin' out these rhymes for them kids who ain't here / Stakes is high, but we gonna try to have fun this year." Now, after the triumphant acquisition of their music, in 2021, its full scope is available to a fresh crop of listeners, nearly two years later. It is an infectious self-confidence that is not just for rap historians, but for the uninitiated too. The rare instance a De La track touched your ears became the reward for an intense labor of love. But if you weren't around to witness their run, or if the music wasn't dusted off and shared with you by a rap elder statesman in the know, the available digital evidence — albums like the crowd-sourced and the Anonymous nobody... As I toiled away at minigames, the four-count drumbeat intro of "Me Myself & I" became seared into my brain, acting as a Pavlovian trigger to elevate my mood.

This week marks the release, at long last, of De La Soul's 1989 debut album 3 Feet High and Rising on music streaming services, along with most of their ...

Imagine, now, a world in which we can reconcile our conception of art so that the artists that we adore aren’t outlaws for making the music we love. to concoct a guest verse from Eminem](https://variety.com/2023/music/news/david-guetta-eminem-artificial-intelligence-1235516924/) for one of his live sets last month.) And this is where we get to the crux of the issue that bedevils the confluence of art and commerce, and muddies the relationship between copying and creativity: The devil is deception, not copying. Meanwhile, parasitic “ [sample trolls](https://slate.com/culture/2006/11/the-shady-one-man-corporation-that-s-destroying-hip-hop.html)” snap up publishing and recording rights to songs often for the express purpose of suing other artists who have interpolated their music. One sample of the Turtles’ “You Showed Me”—decelerated to a dirgelike tempo and paired with some audio from a French language course—provoked a claim in 1990 from the band and its label, and was said to be settled with a payment of $1.7 million. The terrain of record sampling and song interpolation has thereafter been a feast for the lawyers, as any legal gray area tends to be. Some artists seek permission for the slightest of quotations or interpolations lest they leave themselves open to a claim. With sampling rhetorically and judicially equated with theft, the only legal way to compose with samples was to engage in a tortured clearance process, in which the owners of recordings and songs can charge any price they want for a sample of a recording or an interpolation of a song, deny songwriting credit to the collage composers, or refuse to license their music entirely. We don’t care that “La Bamba” and “Twist and Shout” share the same guitar melody any more than we care that “Don’t Stop Believin’,” “Let It Be,” and dozens of other classic pop songs share the Any sound left uncleared, no matter how brief, can legally be subject to an infringement claim—and that’s true even with some of the most creative forms of sampling, new songs that sound nothing like the old songs from which they are made and don’t interfere with their marketability, a key concept in plagiarism law. Yet there has never been a compulsory license for borrowing parts of songs, nor for pieces, or “samples,” of the recordings of those songs. Over the past four decades, even as hip-hop’s method of sonic collage became a basic mode of music making across genres, the legal conception of what music is, and what constitutes authorship, remains rooted in our pre-digital past. While De La’s absence has been a musical deprivation, their return is marked by a more insidious cultural crime: the adulteration of a landmark work of sonic pastiche.

Two or three decades after their initial release De La Soul's early albums are finally available on streaming services — here's a guide to all six.

If it’s easy to forget how brave it was at the time for Posdnuous to rap “Fuck being hard/ Posdnuos is complicated” on “In the Woods,” listening to the whole record now only reiterates how out of step it was with virtually all of hip-hop at the time, and why so little else in the history of the genre sounds like it. Octagon/ Gorillaz producer Dan the Automator for Handsome Boy Modeling School, De La embarked on what might have proven to be their most ambitious project yet: a triple album called “Art Official Intelligence.” Producing for themselves again — save for some pinch-hitting by J Dilla, chart-topper Rockwilder and Paul on the club banger “Ooooh.,” they delivered it in sections, starting with “Mosaic Thump” in 2000, and a follow-up, “Bionix,” a year later. Paul and De La Soul parted ways ahead of their fourth album “Stakes Is High,” which further explored their preoccupations with the recording industry and the state of hip-hop. In the looming shadow of their work with Prince Paul, the record simply could not compare, but it was a necessary step for both the group and their iconic producer. They even revived skits for the record, with a thread starring “Reverend Do Good,” a character who enabled them to offer additional social commentary. To call the group’s third album, “Buhloone Mindstate,” more restrained is a claim one could only make with De La Soul’s discography: at 15 tracks it was their shortest album to date, and its interludes are either too brief or too weird to qualify as skits in the way they were created for the two previous ones. They would unfortunately not enjoy the same freedom from outside or within on “De La Soul is Dead,” an even more ambitious and yet surprisingly defensive follow-up that slapped back at critics of the group’s “D.A.I.S.Y Age” philosophies — starting with cover art depicting a knocked-over pot of the yellow flowers. Remixes and B-sides from the album brought some lightheartedness, like “What Yo Life Can Truly Be,” where Paul adds a chorus of Woody Woodpecker laughing over their dance-party single “A Roller Skating Jam Named ‘Saturdays’” and enlists A Tribe Called Quest member Q-Tip for a verse. Loosely framing their songs with a “game show” (which played no small role in the proliferation of skits that bogged down so many hip-hop albums for years to come), Prince Paul stitched together the group’s mischievous creativity into a musical and existential journey that rejected traditional signifiers of wealth or success, expressed thoughtfulness and vulnerability, and exuded exuberance and plain old fun. But De La Soul preserved the soul — both existential and literal — in between hip-hop’s hard edges, with a peaceful and psychedelic vibe that still did not shy away from the realities of urban life, a complexity reflected as vividly in the trio’s lyricism as in the pioneering production by former Stetsasonic DJ Prince Paul. Additionally, their singles not only featured some showstopping, good-the-the-original track remixes, but B-sides like “Brain Washed Follower” and the “Muppet Show Theme”-sampling “Double Huey Skit” that further explore themes covered on the album. But today — and tragically, less than a month after the

Posdnuos consoles an emotional Maseo at the group's tribute for Trugoy the Dove, who died last month. De La Soul event.

De La Soul, Dave Chappelle, Queen Latifah and many paid tribute to Dave 'Trugoy' Jolicoeur at the touching - and rocking - 'D.A.I.S.Y. Experience.'

De La’s first six albums had been caught in a legal morass for more than two decades ( [head here for more on that](https://variety.com/2023/music/news/de-la-soul-guide-early-albums-streaming-services-1235541586/)), and it’s finally over. Dave Chappelle spoke, and a battery of the DJs in the house — including DJ Red Alert, DJ Premier, D-Nice, the group’s longtime producer Prince Paul and more — rocked the proverbial ones and twos, with the Originals (D-Nice, Stretch Armstrong, Clark Kent, and Rich Medina) curating a set dedicated to the Experience” ended up being a lot more than that.

On the eve of their streaming debut proper, De La Soul salute the late Trugoy The Dove with an all-star roster of friends, family, and peers at Webster ...

All of their albums are now streaming on DSPs. [March 3, 2023] When the clock hit 12, daisy-shaped balloons cascaded from the ceiling as the remaining members of De La Soul put one up for the late Jolicoeur. And as the night pushed on, the stage continued to swell with rap royalty — including Kid Capri, Just Blaze, Common, Pete Rock, Diamond D, DJ Premier, Busta Rhymes, Large Professor, and too many more to accurately recall — until Posdenous and Maseo themselves arrived. Jolicoeur, who was known as Trugoy The Dove, Dave, and Plug 2, died on February 12th, 2023 at the age of 54. [The DA.I.S.Y Experience](https://www.instagram.com/p/CpSdFJsuCEx/). It’s a hard-fought and bittersweet milestone for the Long Island rap legends, who lost founding member, David Jolicoeur, just a few weeks back. [Dave Chappelle](http://www.okayplayer.com/tag/dave-chappelle) and [Q-Tip](http://www.okayplayer.com/tag/q-tip) were early and welcome drop-ins, warming up the crowd with some light and riling words. Today, the group’s first four albums – 3 Feet High and Rising, De La Soul is Dead, Buhloone Mindstate, and Stakes is High– finally landed on streamers. But the guest list was brimming with friends, family, and peers, eager to toast Trugoy and a watershed moment long overdue.

Beginning Friday (March 3), De La's first six albums via Tommy Boy Records – 1989's 3 Feet High and Rising; 1991's De La Soul is Dead; 1993's Buhloone Mindstate ...

If you’re hiphop and you haven’t dug into De La Soul Is Dead and Buhloone Mindstate and Stakes Is High and 3 Feet High… Thank you hip-hop, thank you De La Soul, I love you. [March 3, 2023] “In New York, there are a lot of tough neighborhoods — even in Long Island. The release comes ten days after group member Trugoy the Dove, legal name David Jolicoeur, died at 54-years-old. I saw my life's sum parts tonight. Beginning Friday (March 3), De La’s first six albums via Tommy Boy Records – 1989’s 3 Feet High and Rising; 1991’s De La Soul is Dead; 1993’s Buhloone Mindstate; 1996’s [Stakes Is High](https://www.okayplayer.com/originals/de-la-soul-stakes-is-high.html); 2000’s Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump; and 2001’s AOI: Bionix – are officially on DSPs. “And De La, they wore their personalities naturally and almost as if s–t wasn’t so tough, and that was something that always inspired me.” [March 2, 2023]

Legendary Long Island hip-hop trio De La Soul made its entire catalog available for online streaming Friday.

Sampling everyone from Johnny Cash and Steely Dan to Hall & Oates, De La Soul signaled the beginning of alternative hip-hop. De La Soul’s debut studio album “3 Feet High and Rising,” produced by Prince Paul, was released in 1989 and praised for being a more light-hearted and positive counterpart to more charged rap offerings at the time. Fans were calling it “De La Soul Day” in celebration of the classic albums being made available.

The influential rap trio's catalog has long been absent from streaming services. Now its first six albums will be available, just weeks after the death of ...

“I was like, ‘We should call it From the Soul,’” Mercer recalled. Rell Lafargue, the president of Reservoir, said his company was determined to get the De La Soul catalog online, and gave the group ownership of its master recordings. Close listeners may notice other changes like the disappearance of an Eddie Murphy snippet from “The Magic Number.” When De La Soul was formed, he was the oldest — Mercer is now 53, and Mason 52 — and his bandmates said they viewed him as the “heart” of the group, the older brother whose approval they sought. “Everyone was just really incredible, because they want to be part of history,” she added. They looked like the antithesis of what was the prevailing style aesthetic in hip-hop at that time.” Prince Paul, in a separate interview, recalled: “The beauty of the record was just imagination. Three years later, Tom Silverman, the founder of Tommy Boy, reacquired the label, but De La Soul feuded with him over its contract, and called for a boycott of the label. They would arrive bursting with ideas, and with armfuls of records to sample, throwing everything into the mix and keeping what sounded best. Elsewhere on the album, Posdnuos and Trugoy — that’s “sound sop” and yogurt spelled backward — rapped about girls from English class and referred to themselves as Plug One and Plug Two. For the last year and a half, each of the members had been closely involved in the reissue project, digging through old tapes to identify samples that still needed to be cleared and making cosmetic edits when they could not. The two surviving members of De La Soul spoke in a joint phone interview a day after attending Jolicoeur’s cremation service.