De La Soul - Classic or Dud?

xpost BBs belatedly cleared Paul's samples, iirc

expected release date is november apparently

aaliyah and de la soul are certainly two of the more painful missing artists

Their legacies have definitely taken a hit by not being available on the source most people under 30 use to listen to music.

under 30s still love aaliyah ime

also last I checked, more specifically youtube is that source, and I'm sure their stuff reappears and disappears there often. I didn't check if it's real, but there's a full album upload for Aaliyah with 5M views

Saw these live on a UK tour in... 2018.. I think. midweek night, missing one person from the lineup (didn't even bother to check who it was, I'm a big fan,lol). Really naff gig, bad soundsystem didn't help. 50% of said gig was a random hype man shouting crass party hype stuff, making the audience crouch down and jump up to song cues while the rest of the band just chilled on stage. Felt like the we got the midweek in the boonies/'these rednecks will dance to a leaking tap' show. I was even more annoyed to find for same price tickets in London, a few days later, the whole lineup played with a full backing band, including brass.

making the audience crouch down and jump up to song cues

is it possible that this was Dres from Black Sheep performing The Choice Is Yours?

Saw them at some festival, probably 15 years ago. I love their albums, but they sucked live. Maybe it was the setting, but they seemed bored and obviously did not want to be there.

I saw them at the Rooftop at Pier 17 in NYC in July 2019, and they were AWESOME. They were definitely having fun, and surprisingly energetic given how much older they are now. Anyway, they were probably in the right mood - they were in their hometown, I vaguely recall allusions to their struggles with Tommy Boy (like the PiL song goes, "anger is an energy"), and all the bullshit happening in the country was heavy on their minds, with Pos kneeling and leading the group in prayer at one point, basically asking for the strength to navigate these times without succumbing to hate. Speaking as an agnostic, even I was pretty moved by that.

sorry for the anti-news revive, but i'm just now finding out that past de la affiliate shortie no mass released their debut album (!??!?) last year. if you like vintage nyc indie boom bap, it's decent. the first voice you hear on the album is phife dawg! happy sad!

The catalog is hitting streaming services on March 3. Kinda feel like it's a bit too little too late in terms of salvaging/cementing their legacy — I mean, will a bunch of middle-aged dads gassing on about their genius entice or repel potential teenage listeners?

The first four albums at least are sublime.

The AOI albums rule

Much More came on an old mixtape I made that was in my car yesterday and it remains one of my fave DLS jams

Maybe teenagers will/won't dig them but there's so much fun and so much going on in those records I don't see why not

They're not hard they're complicated

Fucking finally

The AOI albums rule

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown),

This. Especially the first one.

not just streaming services - they weren't even available in the itunes store this whole time.

y'know i was about to post on the "acts not on spotify" thread recently about my general despair over this - so hell yes to this news!

Much More came on an old mixtape I made that was in my car yesterday and it remains one of my fave DLS jams

― his cartoon heart expands, then he relaxes by smoking crack (stevie), Tuesday, January 3, 2023 7:16 AM

i have a "radio station" playlist that i keep and i try not to mess with local/offline files. went out of my way to put "4 more" on it. i liked it at the time, but that's kind of become the definition of a lost classic.

another one of their r+b hooks that i can't get enough of these days is "all good?" from the first aoi. featuring chaka, too.

c'mon 3 march!!!!

sorry, enthusiasm overload!

"much more" and "4 more" are two completely different songsa

In an impossibly excellent year for hip-hop, Buhloone Mindstate might be the best of 1993.

i'd have to think about that, but i would say "i am i be" is definitely the best thing they ever did.

Buhloone is the one of theirs I still play the most.

What a jam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odsPr0GzSLs

"stir my lime with light, drink it down slowly"

mosaic thump is a top tier de la album and prob the one i listen to most.

havent we heard their stuff was gonna go on streaming many times before?

It's been promised for a long time. Plus you may remember the time they sent out everything as low-bitrate mp3s.

there's frankly not much bad de la, period

otm

De La/Beasties are the only holder age groups I can think of whose individual members never made solo records

Plus you may remember the time they sent out everything as low-bitrate mp3s.

― Chris L, Tuesday, January 3, 2023 4:27 PM

yeah, i grabbed all of the downloads at the time.
just checked : they are all encoded at 320.

i listen to those on the regular, they're fine.

xxp Ahem...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOWcvoDrJuw

Also love "Much More". Great featured vocalist who didn't do a lot more. Listening to what I can find now.

i'm hoping they put *everything* on there because some of those 12" mixes and dubs are pretty damn classic-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBEqyTAHEyU

"what yo life can truly be" feat the whole damn native tongues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2B0hg6KUjE

"keepin the faith" (just a touch mix)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCFuPeTqiA8

"millie pulled a pistol on santa (remix)"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNKhM-iCkxc

"the dawn brings smoke"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUbk3FrMYfY

"who's skatin?"

COOKIE DEEMUSS!!

havent we heard their stuff was gonna go on streaming many times before?

― im a beacon of light (Spottie), Tuesday, January 3, 2023 11:23 AM bookmarkflaglink

It's coming in tandem with vinyl and cassette reissues that shops are already taking preorders for, so this feels 99.9% real.

yeah, i grabbed all of the downloads at the time.
just checked : they are all encoded at 320.

So I was the one who misremembered. It was the file names that made it obvious they pulled them from somewhere.

No ID3 tags.

cassette reissues

chucklesmhsigh

Yeah I'm sorry but I'd love to have these on tape :-D

honestly cassette was the format that most people heard all that era on, sometimes i listen to old stuff and it doesn't sound the same without that compressed cassette feel, makes way more sense here than most times

i think they are reissuing a cd as well from
looking at the get on down website

I remember that my cassette copy of De La Soul is Dead was a bit different from the CD version. Missing some songs I think.

My experience with these guys was odd, but probably not unique or even unusual. I absolutely loved the first two albums, then lost sight of them for years. When I finally got around to listening to some of their later stuff, I thought maybe it was a completely different group of people somehow operating under the same name.

makes sense, since they had died

See, I knew there was an explanation.

Are they reissuing Is Dead and Buhloone (and Stakes) on vinyl too? Because I have Is Dead and Buhloone but they're missing a bunch of tracks and would be up for unexpurgated versions.

Years ago on Sound Opinions, around the early '00s when it was still on WXRT, Jim DeRogatis reminisced about getting an advance copy (I *think* a cassette) of De La Soul Is Dead for review, and because there were major concerns of piracy, they threw in something like a braying donkey that would be randomly heard every now and then. He no longer had it but he said it actually added to the surreal nature of the album. (He brought this up because he wanted to talk about "Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa" for what was probably a Christmas-related show.

I've never been able to find any mention of this anywhere since then, much less an actual copy. Anyone know what DeRogatis was talking about?