 | |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
De La Soul: Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump
It's been a long time since De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising dropped on the hip-hop world like an A-bomb. The first rappers to be unabashedly soft, this trio of New Yorkers sang about "Potholes in My Lawn" and lamented the absence of their beloved "Jenifa." In the process, they revolutionized the masses' ideas of appropriate rap topics and allowed for a wider range of experience to be included in the world of hip-hop, creating space for some of the best music of the past decade, including A Tribe Called Quest, the Pharcyde, and the Fugees. However, De La Soul has met with mixed success recently. Their last record, 1996's Stakes is High, was the first without demented studio wizard Prince Paul, and the music suffered as a result.
In their four-year hiatus since Stakes is High, Posdnuos, Dave (formerly known as Trugoy the Dove), and P.A. Pasemaster Mase appear to have studied up on their sense of humor. The songs on their new album, Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump, sound like the work of elder statesmen who, through years of hard work and dedication, have reclaimed the sense of play and good fun they naturally came to on their first album. The laid-back spirit is infectious, and the myriad guest artists on Mosaic Thump, including Xzibit, Busta Rhymes, and Beastie Boys' MCA and Ad Rock, sound as relaxed as they ever have. The one exception is the overly hyper Freddie Foxxx, who clearly forgot his medication the day he recorded "U Don't Wanna B.D.S."
The beats are also insanely contagious, especially in De La's collaboration with Redman, "Oooh," which features a combination of rubber band bass, Star Wars special effects noises, and the patent lunacy of their cohort. The song hearkens back to the glory days of hip-hop circa 1988 by being both a great pop song and a complex code of lyrics. "Oooh" is my first nomination for Best Single of the Decade, that rare song that completely captures a moment in sound and keeps you driving around the block one more time in the hope of hearing it spill out of the radio and explode in your ears. The other songs on the album are uniformly excellent, but the only other track that lives up to "Oooh" is "All Good?" with Chaka Khan. "All Good?" follows the same pattern of De La's vanilla-ice-cream-flow verses, smooth and classic, with Chaka's chocolate syrup choruses flowing in and engulfing everything.
Mosaic Thump is the first of a planned three album series, all scheduled to be released in the next 12 months. In contrast to F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous dictum, De La Soul appear to be in the midst of their second act on the American stage, re-emerging in the midst of an ongoing debate about the history and future of hip-hop. Recent writings like Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists and The Vibe History of Hip-Hop attempt to create a canon of hip-hop excellence, an admirable goal, and a useful one in order to give hip-hop the cultural cache it so clearly deserves. However, De La Soul's unwillingness to fade into the background as historical figures and to be pigeonholed as the D.A.I.S.Y.-age rappers of Three Feet High and Rising shows the difficulty of creating such distinctions. De La Soul's re-emergence highlights the possibility that hip-hop may be too complex and multi-faceted to be categorized so easily. There are worse problems that music could have. (Tommy Boy)
—Saul Austerlitz
All materials © 2000 The Yale Herald, Inc., and its staff.
Got any questions, comments, or advice? Email the online editors at
online@yaleherald.com.
Like to join us?