How De La Soul Changed the World
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I'm Brian Hyatt. This is Rolling Stone Music Now.

Today, I'm talking with author Marcus J. Moore about one of the greatest groups of all time, De La Soul. Marcus, welcome back to the show. We've had you on a couple times. Always a pleasure to have you. Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate you. So we talked about your book about Kendrick Lamar, which is great with Kendrick back on top. It's a good time to go back and check out that book by Marcus if you haven't read it already. But today we're here to talk about a different book, High and Rising, a book about De La Soul.

It's amazing that there hasn't been a book about this incredible group before. It's long overdue. This is one of the greatest hip hop groups of all time. Greatest groups of all time, period. Yeah, exactly. Even when I was researching and when I first had the idea that I wanted to write a book about De La Soul, my first thought was, oh, well, clearly I can't do that because

there's already been a book written. And then much to my surprise, there wasn't one. So I don't know. It's fascinating how there hasn't been a book written about De La Soul, but I also think it's because, and I can't take credit for this idea. I did a talk the other night and the gentleman said this, where hip hop is still fairly young. It's still a fairly young genre. Whereas other genres, you can read a million jazz books. You can read a million rock books. Um,

But you can't read a lot of hip-hop books because we're just now getting to the point where our faves growing up are getting to the daylight status where you can write about them as legends. Hip-hop feels so established in so many ways, and it is a 50-year-old genre, but there's a lot of canonization and catch-up still to be done. So it's a lot of fertile ground to be covered incredibly. I think one of the most important things your book does is

is, listen, it's always tough for any group, any act, when they have an iconic, kind of near-perfect, career-defining first album. And that's very much the case for De La Soul. Like, Three Feet High and Rising is, talk about canonized, it's a widely worshipped album.

But the thing is, it can kind of unfairly overshadow the rest of the catalog. One of the things you do so well is break beyond the debut that people tend to overemphasize. Yeah, and that's the thing. I definitely wanted to make sure that I did, because even in writing about Daylight, it's easy, or even talking about Daylight, it's easy to just talk about the golden era record. So it's easy to just say Three Feet High and Rising, Daylight Soul is Dead, Balloon Mindstate,

and Stakes is High and Stop There. But what I wanted to do was present them as whole human beings and whole musicians where, to your point, like a lot of people, when they think about De La Soul, they think about how they felt when they first heard Three Feet High and Rising. I can't imagine how it is for them to be held to an ideal or to music or to creativity that they created when they were teenagers. I even think within myself, like if I were held to the same standard

Or to the same thoughts that I had when I was 18 or 17. I can't imagine. I wanted to look at the whole arc of their career without sidestepping some of the music that I didn't think was great. Whatever. I wanted to write about them as we would talk about them in a barbershop. You do tell their story and it's a critical and cultural analysis and there's a lot of personal stuff as well. So it's definitely not a straight biography. It's a more complex book than that. But one of the things, and I would say in book promo, like pretty much everything

All publicity is good publicity, I would argue, even for something like this. But I was one of the people who were frankly outraged and offended when, and I tweeted about this like a lot of people did, and it was nice to see the writing community come together, when in a really misguided move, De La Soul themselves basically condemned the books, pointed out it was unauthorized.

And it seemed to be like a fundamental misunderstanding on their part of what this book even is or how sort of books about musicians work. Was that hurtful to you? Does it inevitably affect your feelings about the group or how does one handle that as the author of a book about a group? No, that's a fair question and I'll definitely answer it as honestly as possible. So,

When that whole thing first happened, I definitely felt betrayed by the culture because I feel like between their reaction and last year in particular, I put together a show for New York Winter Jazz Fest called A Night at the East. And it was celebrating this cultural community in central Brooklyn called the East from the 70s. And even during the compiling of that show, I took arrows from the East community as in like,

well, you're an outsider trying to do this show. Whereas I'm coming from the other side, as naive as it probably sounds, just trying to put, I'm just trying to put people on the dope music and dope art. Like it's quite literally that for me where I want to just shout people out.

So I'm catching heat for that. And then every so often, like if I write a story in the New York Times, I'll have like industry middle people trying to nitpick this paragraph and that paragraph and this sentence versus that sentence. And oh, this song features that person, but not that person. Like they're just in my phone because they feel like because they know me in real life, they feel like they can touch me. Right. So I say all that to say that, yeah, when that whole thing first happened, I definitely felt betrayed by the culture because I'm like, I'm really tired of

taking bullets from a culture that I try to uphold. And as soon as I had that thought, that's when I saw the community coming out in the real way. And that's when I felt pretty good because it spoke to the integrity of

that I've built up in this industry. And it's like, I didn't have to say anything publicly. I wanted to say something publicly, but then I realized, oh, I don't have to say anything because my name is out here doing all the work. And it was just, quite frankly, it was encouraging to see as much as I tried to describe to them, to Maceo in particular, privately, that like, look, no one's trying to profit off of your likeness.

Here are the people who you can get in contact with if you want to get compensated. Here are all the things and here are the flowers. And I will have to say this publicly, like I saw that in one reaction to a friend of mine who was defending me on Instagram. He said, Maceo said, oh, I had a conversation with Marcus and it didn't go well. That's not true at all. Like we had a back and forth private conversation via Instagram DM.

And he told me directly, and I have the screenshots to prove it, that he's not angry. He said, I'm not angry, but we should be compensated. And I said, brother, I totally get that. I understand it. Here are the people you should get in contact with to at least have the conversation.

So for him, and I also heard that Paz told other people that, oh no, we told him no years ago. I also have receipts going back four years to show that I've been trying to get in contact with them in a real way. They just never responded. They can never be bothered. And I had like people in the middle trying to get us in touch with each other. They just couldn't be bothered. So it was quite fascinating and it was disappointing because they were quite literally judging a book by its cover. Yeah.

without having read the book. I think it was a fundamental misunderstanding about how books about subjects work. In no way did you ever present it as a product of De La Soul.

As you said, if they read it, I mean, only you could have written this book. It's an intensely personal book. A lot of it's about your own life. It's so absurd for them to think that they have any control over that. But I would say trying to be more sympathetic. It's not like writing a book about the Beatles.

where there's no way Paul McCartney could feel like, hey, I haven't gotten my flowers, I haven't gotten my compensation from the world. These guys have had a rough go of it in many ways. And I think that that's sort of psychologically and even financially where they're coming from.

at it from, I still think it's completely wrong and ridiculous. It's sort of, I think it's emblematic of that, of the fact that we'll get to that, like these guys, because of issues with their former label Tommy Boy and the fact of how many samples they use, their whole catalog was offline forever until recently. Their whole legacy was completely fucked up by that.

They, of course, also recently lost a member, which you write about as beautifully as anyone has. So there's a lot going on. And then I would say also one of the things you chronicle in the book is

they sometimes would start beefs that were ill-considered and make decisions that were ill-considered. And I think that is probably all part of this, frankly. No, that's totally fair. When they jumped out there with the book cover, with the big old stop sign on it, I was like, okay. And also I told my team this was going to happen because I told them, I said, look, I thought Maceo and I had a really good back and forth, but I was like, I'm telling you the next move is for them to jump out there publicly and

Because that's what they do. They're going to jump out there and they're going to say, oh, my God, we've been wronged. And here's somebody else trying to, like, get over on us. Whereas I'm trying to explain and what others have explained to them publicly on their social media platforms is like Marcus is not the enemy here.

At all like he is on your side if you would have tapped in with dude You would have seen that but also that's when I had to sit in the emotion I had to sit and just be still for a second and I had to realize that their response was indeed a trauma response because your point it's like when you've been fighting against an industry for 35 years and

Then naturally, yes, anybody coming along that you feel like is trying to take from your legacy or whatever, you're naturally going to make them the enemy. But it's like I tried to tell them that this isn't that I'm not trying to profit off anybody. And that's not how books work. Nobody's profiting, but that kind of thing. But they didn't want to hear it. So from there, it's like, well,

The thing I've learned over the years in the industry and just in life is that, quite frankly, sometimes people just have opinions about you regardless. They're just dug into their opinions and there's nothing you can do. I could have, the whole thing could have been a love letter in every page. I could have wrote, I love you de la soul. And they still would be like, okay, no, because look at the cover. So yeah, I just learned it was, yeah, I don't think it's, you know, I wondered part of me was like, oh, that, you know, there's, it's a,

It's an honest book, so there's plenty of places, but no more than usual for a book like this. Like, there's plenty of places where you're like, this thing they were doing was tiresome, or this song doesn't work. That's totally normal. But I don't think it was about that at all. I think it was just about the idea that someone wrote a book about them without paying them, which isn't, it's just, yeah, it's not how it works. But anyway, that's...

I'm glad that it seems like you can also kind of look past it. Writing about groups, sometimes you're a fan of something and being in this business, you do sometimes... You interact with them as people and sometimes the interactions aren't that great and you have to decide whether to get past that and be able to still love the music. And usually...

I can. This is an extreme case, but your love for them was also extreme. So it seems like you're able to kind of... Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong. It was tough. It was definitely tough after that to look at them in the same light because it's like I've reached a place in my career where I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. And I'm truly grateful for that. So for me to take four years out of my life and say like, hey, I want to write about De La Soul, A, because they're dope and they're legends.

And B, I just want to kind of shout them out. Not even just for us. Like, I'm thankful that you and I are talking. But anything that I write, be it this book, be it the Kendrick book, be it the next thing I'm doing.

It's all for future generations and younger listeners and younger readers. Yeah. So it's like, you know, I'm just trying to contextualize you all. So like years later, when people come back and they want to know what was going on, they can look in that way. Your music lives forever. And if they would have been smart about the way they played this, they would have looked at those streaming numbers around book release time and probably would have seen like, oh, wait, hold on. We got an uptick.

So I don't understand how you can vilify love. And if it if everything for them comes down to money, I can't also understand how you would not see how you could. It's free publicity for you all if you want to look at it that way. So instead of vilifying me, you could have used this as an opportunity for yourselves.

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Tell me about the formation of De La Soul and about the guys in the group. Yeah, so the members of De La Soul, they formed in Amityville, but they have roots in New York City proper. So Maceo was or is a DJ from Brooklyn. Paz, before he moved to Long Island, his family lived in the Bronx and Harlem. Dave, I want to say he also was from one of the five boroughs for sure. They got their start in Long Island and they...

Quite honestly, like they came together as a rap group that was into different things for the lack of a more complex term. So Paz and Dave were rappers first. They were in another rap group that wasn't going anywhere and they split off and decided to start working on their own thing. Now, history will say that it's always been Paz, Dave and Maceo. But in the early days, it was this other guy named Charlie Rock.

who actually helped put De La Soul together. And that's why it was important for me to have him in Chapter One as the quote-unquote forgotten member of De La. As he explains it, a lot of those samples and a lot of the sound that they landed on started with Dave and Charlie Rock in the early days, like in Charlie's basement, hunting for Hall & Oates samples, etc. Meanwhile, Maceo...

He is working on another project with Prince Paul that by both of their admission, they didn't like. They thought it was garbage. Prince Paul was already DJing for Stetsasonic, right? Yes. Yes. So Prince Paul was DJing at Stetsasonic. He was a bit of a local legend. He went on all kinds of DJ battles by doing all this crazy scratching and things like that. But in Stetsasonic, he was the young guy who the other members wouldn't always listen to. Whereas in De La Soul, he

He was the industry vet who already had a few years in the game and was looking at the industry from the inside looking out. Dayla would trust Prince Paul with whatever. He would clean up stuff like plug tuning. He cleaned up in terms of like making it like quicker and a little more listenable. But all the ideas that the other guys had,

Prince Paul would let them create. That's the major component of De La Soul. They had somebody like Prince Paul who would be like, yeah, sure, let's try it. Yeah, go for it. Yeah, oh, you're going to start moaning in the studio? Okay, all right, well, hit record, whatever. And I think that's what led to Three Feet High and Rising being like the sort of patchwork collage that it is now. It stands out in hip-hop history for its sort of...

The lightness of the sound and the eclectic nature of the samples drawing from everything is like yodeling. It's named after a Johnny Cash song. It's incredibly creative, eclectic, collage, light, fun, quirky. Many of the adjectives that I'm describing were things that they then spent a lot of time reacting against. That perception and that sound.

and their own album cover and the whole Daisy thing. But where did that sort of lightness of spirit and sound come from in your estimation? In my estimation, I think it came from them living on Long Island, them living in Amityville. Paz has even said this, where...

They didn't have the pressure of living in New York City. The thing about New York, as much as I love living in New York, is that there isn't a natural anxiety. You're in your apartment, you got a neighbor above you, you got people on the side. You feel like you're in your own space, but you also feel like you're always around somebody else.

Even walking outside, there's always somebody around. Whereas in Amityville, you have a yard, you can sit by the water, you have more space and time to let your brain create. You don't have to be as pressurized. I can speak to that as a person who grew up outside of D.C. Like Washington, D.C. in the 80s was crazy because it was the height of the crack cocaine epidemic and D.C. was the murder capital at the time.

Whereas when I'm living in Landover, Maryland, it's like, yes, you're still getting some of the residual craziness of the city, but you can breathe a little better. When I listen to De La Soul's music, I hear a lot of my own upbringing in it. They had the space, time and creative resources to listen to all kinds of stuff. They're listening to Steely Dan and Hall of Notes and Bob Dylan, etc.,

And it led to the experimentation. Ultimately, they dared to be different. That's what I appreciate about De La and I think it all started from where they live. Geography played a big part. And there's bigger songs on the record, but Plugged Tune In was kind of the breakthrough. It was the breakthrough. That was the one they recorded. And Prince Paul said it kind of dragged a little bit. The home demo was really slow.

and very woozy. And so that was the one that quickened up. It kept a lot of the dirt from the original demo. That was the one that opened up a lot of people to, hey, what is this? Bending their ear to that sound. One of the things that's so interesting and in a way gets overblown, it's the extent to which they reacted against their first album with, of course, De La Sola's Dead in 1991. And

I feel, personally, if they didn't call the album that, didn't have the picture of the dead flowers on the front, didn't have the intro skit, there's some darker tracks on it, much darker. My brother is a bass head, and Millie pulled a pistol on Santa, super dark. But sonically and even lyrically, a lot of times, it's not as different. It's a great album, and it's not as different from the debut as people like to think.

act like it is at least that's my take currently yeah I think that's totally accurate I feel like a lot of the pushback against De La Sola's dead is just the title

And I even remember that as a child, don't get me wrong, I was 10 years old, but I've been a music nerd, a certified music nerd since I was like five. So I even remember even as a kid being like, wow, that's very stark imagery, the flower pot being kicked over or knocked over. But yeah, I feel like there's something to that.

It wasn't so dissimilar from Three Feet High and Rising, but I can also acknowledge that a lot of the backlash De La Sola's dead got is because it didn't appeal as openly to white listeners. Sure. Not too long ago, there was a recent article where a writer was like, oh, I didn't like De La Sola's dead because I felt like they were sort of pushing against their own

Tides, I'm paraphrasing. When I listen to De La Soul Is Dead, you're not going to hear the Steely Dan. You're not going to hear Paula Notes as much. You're not going to hear Blue Eyed Soul. As much as we want to love Three Feet High and Rising as a record, and as much as people want to vilify De La Soul Is Dead, I feel like the difference is quite literally between black and white. Because

Three Feet High and Rising, De La Soul on Three Feet High and Rising appealed to all kinds of listeners, whereas on De La Soul is Dead, I feel like they reminded listeners that they were indeed black men. And that...

probably threw a lot of people off. It almost kind of reminds me of the SNL skit. Remember when... The day Beyonce became black? Is that the one? That's it. That's the one where it's like, oh my God, formation comes out and it's like, oh no, what are we going to do? I feel like De La Soul is dead was totally that. Yup, it was that, man. There's definitely moments where they're reacting against the idea that...

anything on the first album implied they were soft that would seem like one of the things they did want to because you're writing a book like in real life they were getting in fights and stuff like which surprised prince paul they were not soft the real thing was like they were nice guys but don't fuck with them kind of situation that's the goal for anybody i would imagine i feel like that's like the ultimate infinity stone where it's like okay people love de la soul

but also don't run up on them. I think that's amazing. And I feel like that also surprised a lot of cats too, where it's like, oh, wow, these guys aren't always so super nice, so super positive. They don't always have on the flower shirts and the wild hairstyles. They are still black men in 1980s New York. So I would be careful, but I got to think.

Right. But at the same time, Roller Skating Jam named Saturdays, there's plenty of light and fun moments on that album. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, it's a lot of like it's a lot of I mean, hey, love, you got hey, love on that. You got all kinds of like bright moments on it. But again, I feel like, again, going back to the theme of judging a book by its cover, judging the album by its name. When people saw De La Soul is Dead, that's just such a stark.

like aggressive title that I feel like that probably turned people off just before they even click play on the record. Yeah. I mean, it is interesting. They have a little bit of a self-destructive tendency in this group. Sometimes it, it, it was like an unnecessarily extreme way to present your second album. It was pretty funny. Like on a, on a marketing level, it's like, maybe don't say your group is dead on the cover of your second album. Like that's not commercially, like maybe not the best idea, but you know, the, the,

True artist. And then we get to Balloon Mindstate, like I said, I think just a fantastic album, bringing the jazz in, having the longest instrumental passage possibly in the history of hip hop up to that point.

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Yeah, they have less to prove on that album, but it's also a make or break album because anytime you get around to the third anything, that's when people start either like, okay, what's this next one going to do? Are you going to do something different? Or, okay, we're on, we're ready to think about somebody else. It's a good challenge to have, but the fact that their first album was like this landmark record and a seismic album, then De La Soul is dead. As much as people want to banter about it, I feel like

What they did ultimately was the smart move, because what you want to do in any art with any piece of art is to create something that's going to hang around. So they could have easily made three feet high and rising, too. But the fact that they decided like, no, OK, that was that we're going to do something totally different. I feel like that was a mark of bravery. It was a marker of like extreme courage.

So with Balloon Mindstate, they almost kind of found themselves in this place already where like, okay, well, what are we going to do now? Because we've pretty much said it all already. So the fact that they came back with this esoteric, like jazz laden record about growing up and about splitting apart from your friends, I feel like that also stands the test of time because it talks about adulting in a real way that we hadn't heard to that point. And this is also where they

They make this incredible album and it's where they start to part ways with the commercial mainstream. Unfortunately, it didn't do as well. It starts that path where they're making great stuff, but it's not necessarily connecting on a commercial level. Yeah. Yeah. And the thing is, it's not connecting on a commercial level compared to the first two records. So it's not like it did poorly. It's not like it was a

poorly selling record. But at the same time, when your first two records are like platinum and then all of a sudden your next record is gold, then it's like, oh, what's going on? You start thinking that maybe the sky is falling a little bit and it's time to do something different. I appreciate Balloon Mindstate now more than I did when it came out. Even a narrative they probably don't want to admit to, but it's a narrative that all of us talked about within the hip hop community is they were indirectly compared to Tribe Called Quest.

Like, even though they were like folks, they were cool with each other. Anytime they came out with records in the same year, it was, oh, OK, are you a De La Sola's dead guy or do you like low end theory? 1993 comes around. It's like, OK, cool. Is a balloon mind state or is it midnight marauders? Right. And to take a step back to remind people about native tongues.

The Native Tongues were a loosely based collective featuring De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest, The Jungle Brothers, Moni Love, Queen Latifah. And they were essentially an alternative rap collective. They were like black bohemians in that way where they were talking about they were talking about love. They were talking about positivity. They had a song called Buddy, a video called Buddy that they were all in.

And it creates this moment of peace and love and hip hop, so to speak. Tribe and De La within the group were closely aligned. While I got to give credit to the Jungle Brothers, they were before De La and De La and Tribe with that next wave of black bohemian alternative hip hop.

It's so interesting because as a group that stayed together for a while, you can trace their discography. There's all this hip hop history happening around them. Together, they're

to go from 89 with their debut to 96 and in hip hop years it's like half a century. So by 96 when they come out with Stakes is High, everything in hip hop has changed. But it's an incredibly forward-looking album. It was the first place where Mos Def reached a lot of the world. It was one of the first times we heard from Common. Yeah, that was the first time I heard Mos Def. And also like 96 was a big year for Mos Def because like that was the first time I heard him on a record two years later.

The first Lyricist's Lounge album comes out and the first single is him, Q-Tip and Tash from the Alcoholics. So, yeah, it's the first time we really heard Common in a big way, you know, because obviously Common was around because in 1993, his Resurrection album came out.

But it was the first time we had heard Common rapping with somebody like a De La Soul on a song called The Business, which is a great song and it still holds up. J Dilla also is on the album. They were doing some really good talent scouting at this point in their career. Yeah, at that point, yeah. J Dilla was starting to become like this force in hip hop. It was like the next coming of Q-tip, so to speak.

And he produced Stakes is High, which I mean, again, I'm a Stakes is High person. And when it's time to play that album, I'm typically going to that song, the title track, because that Ahmad Jamal sample is insane. First of all, the song itself, Swahili Land is an incredible song.

And the fact that he picked the best part of the song and made it like this triumphant return for one of our beloved hip hop groups, I feel like it kind of introduced him to a new audience and ushered in a new era for De La. They kept going after that and made some overlooked but often strong music. But one of the things that defined their career going forward was this crazy thing. So iTunes hits around 2003, 2004. They're not on it.

You cannot buy their classic albums on iTunes. Streaming comes a few years later, they're not on streaming. In an era when online digital music defined the way people got their music, first through buying on iTunes, then through streaming,

They were absent. Their canonical great albums, their 90s golden era albums were not available because of sampling. But it's also they made this decision. They were on Tommy Boy, which was a smaller label. It just seems like Tommy Boy didn't have their shit together to get these approvals, given the fact that they eventually, once they got off it, were able to solve this in a year.

I would have to blame Tommy boy, unless I'm missing something. Well, I guess that's where it gets tricky because, you know, because no, no, no. I mean, because it's like, it depends on what story you believe. If you believe De La, then yes, it's all Tommy's fault. They didn't really, uh,

pressed to get the samples cleared and to redo the contract to get their music on streaming. Whereas if you believe Tommy, you believe that De La didn't tell them about all the samples on those records and as a result they had to go back with the fine-tooth comb

comb through everything and try to figure out all the samples so if you really want the story you have to read Marcus's book there's a lot of ins and outs here but they were famously sued by the Turtles for a sample on the debut and it was and that one supposedly they didn't tell the label about right so again that's one of those like okay who do you believe according to Tommy Boy

I actually got this from a mini doc called De La Sola's Not Dead that was done by Mass Appeal. So shout out to them. But Tommy in that documentary said, no, they didn't tell us about it because it was like this little like what they would call like bug out pieces where they'd figured no one would even pay attention. Where

Whereas they, in another clip in that documentary said like, well, no, actually we cleared, we, we filled everything out and it was on them. So it really is. Okay. Who's telling the truth? Because you're getting different versions of the story and it happened with the turtle sample. And then again, moving forward where no one wanted to take responsibility for it. So that's,

It really comes down to their story, Tommy's story, De La's story, and the truth is in there somewhere. I'll fully admit this generationally, the first time I ever heard Steely Dan in any context was through this sample of Peg on I Know. I had never heard a Steely Dan song, to my knowledge, before I heard that. I'm sure that's the case for a lot of people.

That was one clearly, that's one that's like replayed on the eventual digital release. So that must have been a holdup as well. When the music comes back out, you can notice some of the songs feel different or they just don't have the original samples on them or they're just not on the records.

at all. That was another reason why it took so long for the music to even come back out, even as they announced on Instagram Live that they signed a deal. They announced that they signed a deal with Reservoir Media to get all their music back up. But after that, it took years for them to actually get everything approved. It was like, OK, well, we either got to get all these samples cleared or recleared. And in the instance where we can't, we either have to have session players come in and try to replay the part

or we gotta totally take out this sample. It'll be De La Sola's dead, but kinda sorta. Like it'll be some other stuff on it or some different wrinkles that'll remind you that it's not the record that you grew up with. - What they eventually did once they broke from Tom & Boy, as we said, is they had an expert go through everything, clear what they could,

worked with Prince Paul, like you said, have things replayed, find different samples. There are moments where it's a little frustrating sometimes when it's not quite the music you remember. It doesn't hit the same. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. You want to be able to play Three Feet High and Rising and remember it as it was in 1989. You want to go back to De La Sola's Dead and

remember the school dance you went to in 1991. So when you play it now and it just doesn't sound the same, certain listeners can feel a way about that because it's like, oh, this just doesn't really hit in the way that I thought it was going to hit. It just depends on your perspective, because if you're listeners like us, then your brain is automatically going to go back and try to remember 1989. If you're a younger listener and you don't have that perspective, you don't have that same nostalgia attached to the music that we do.

I mean, I would say overall, they did a good job in the sense that it still works. It's only a problem if your memories don't match. That's where, and I think, and I know is the only one where I'm like, ugh, this doesn't, without Donald Fagan's actual voice, this isn't quite hitting for me. It's a little bit like De La Soul's versions. Some of them are a little bit too close to re-records, but all the original lead vocals are there. It's close enough. I'm just glad it's out there. It was a cultural tragedy that some of the most influential music artists

was not available for years. It was not available for the entire 21st century until recently. It's crazy to think about, and I think that's also...

It also speaks to the narrative because I feel like when I say narrative, I feel like when they came back out, when the music came back to streaming, it was a big thing. It was celebrated far and wide. But I also feel like mystery is marketing. Indirectly, De La Soul created this sort of mixtape trading community where before the music came back to streaming, you may know somebody who have

they they may have the mp3s of de la sol is dead and they'll just kind of give it to you on the low i really want to hear balloon mind state maybe i know somebody who has it and you'll get it it's a tragedy that the music wasn't on streaming and they missed out on so much money

As a result, but I feel like that also played into the love, the mystique and the love that was there whenever they came back in early 2023. One of the craziest things was, and just shows like this sort of like full incompetence mess of this situation was in. Okay. So in 2021, Spider-Man no way home came out and they had that very prominent use of the magic number, right?

And yet still every kid who heard that song for the first time and wanted to hear Daywell Soul, it still wasn't on streaming. So it's just like somehow they got the approval to get it in the movie, but not on streaming. Like what a mess. What a just really unfortunate situation.

Yeah, no, totally. Yeah. So obviously that's a little bit above my pay grade, but the whole thing was just kind of like, okay, can we just get their music back up? Because to their credit, they got it done because I know Tommy was offering that deal where they got 90% of the revenue or something crazy. So the fact that they can move past that also speaks to their perseverance as men and as creators.

How did De La Soul change hip-hop? I mean, there's simple things like the fact that skits credit them or blame them because they became kind of like, eventually they became skip tracks in a lot of cases. But popularizing skits was solely them, really. An alternative and just broadening the idea of what hip-hop could be is so key to their legacy. But how do you see it? How did they change hip-hop? Where do you hear their influence? And it's in a lot of places in the intervening years.

I feel like they changed hip hop by letting other people know that it's cool to be different. When you think about De La Soul, when they came out in the late 80s, you could pretty much guess what the other music was going to sound like. It was all different, but it was all hyper masculine, be it Public Enemy, be it Boogie Down Productions, be it LL Cool J, Rakim. And all of these people are super dope. You could kind of know what they were going to do. Whereas with De La Soul,

Quite honestly, they showed different sides of black masculinity. They showed that you can still be masculine, but still tell your brother that you love him. You can be masculine, but still wear black bohemian chic and throw flowers into the crowd.

Musically, they brought a sense of adventure to hip-hop. Whereas back then, you're going to get a James Brown break. You're going to hear Clyde Stubblefield's break on somebody's song. You're going to get soul samples. You're going to get a lot of the same samples flipped many different ways on different tracks. Whereas De La Soul, at least to my ear, was the first group where it's the first time you're hearing Hall & Oates, Steely Dan within a rap context.

the first time you're hearing Johnny Cash referenced in a hip hop context, I feel like their courage and daring to be different allowed other people who may have been scared to be different to go out and be weird, so to speak. So,

I can draw a direct line from De La Soul to Common to Most Deaf to The Roots to Pharrell, Kanye West, and in current day, directly to Tyler, the creator. When I was starting to write this book, I had a conversation with Earl Sweatshirt and I told him, I was like, oh yeah, my next book, I'm working on a De La book. And he went crazy. He was like, what? He was like, bro, I can't wait for that.

But I also think that he was influenced by De La because like it was just they they did different things that stuck to your ear a lot longer than other people. And I appreciate other rappers who in the 90s would just hit you with all kinds of bars. I feel like their music doesn't hold up as well because they didn't divvy their sound as much. Whereas De La.

from this record to that record, they were always going to come with something different. And I feel like that's what helped them stand up. And I feel like that's what influenced other groups to do the same. So case in point with the soul Aquarians, the thing I appreciate about somebody like a common is that,

Resurrection sounded nothing like One Day It'll All Make Sense, which sounded nothing like, Lord knows, Electric Circus or Like Water for Chocolate or Beat. And I feel like that all comes from somebody like a De La who dared to be different and said like, okay, y'all love Three Feet High and Rising? That's great. We're not going to have any Dayglo colors on this next album. We're going to give you De La Soul is Dead. So I think ultimately that's their legacy is they decided to just be brave and be different and

Yeah, they took a lot of bullets. They took a lot of arrows from the culture. But 30 years later, here we are talking about them. They always understood that the production and the rhymes were one piece. They were never just selecting from a group of beats that were sent to them. They were far from it. Like they were always crafting a sound at the same time they were crafting their rhymes. Exactly. They always decided they were going to do something that

What's against the grain? And I feel like we all can take something from that. You mentioned the skits. They were the first ones to do skits. As a result, I look at certain comedians and I'm like, okay, they probably love De La. You can hear it in the comedy they do because you got to take a risk. It's the risk takers that ultimately live forever. And I feel like De La Soul were the ultimate risk takers. And that's why

When they took such liberties with their work, maybe they were a little afraid to do this. They still did it. And then it just worked out well for them in the end because they were also good dudes that people loved.

And finally, you point out because they were always in this group, there was this weird tendency to sort of underrate them as MCs. Yeah, no, and that's the thing. Like, I made this mistake when I was younger trying to compare them to a group like Wu-Tang or even like an Outkast or a Goody Mob, where I wanted to hear a solo Paz record or I wanted to hear what a solo Dave record would sound like. Later on, I realized they're just one of these collectives that makes more sense for them to hang together. That's not any diss to...

any solo idea they would have, but I feel like their vocals work together so well within one pocket. The solo Paz record or solo Dave record probably wouldn't hit the same as a De La Soul record. And I feel like I commend them for not breaking up in that regard because look, I don't know all the inner workings. I don't know if they had knock down, drag out arguments and they were going to split.

But the fact that they held it together for the sake of the collective, I feel like is truly commendable. Yeah.

Everyone should check out your book. Marcus, thanks so much for taking time and joining me. Oh, thank you. I appreciate your time, man. And that's our show. We'll be back next week. In the meantime, subscribe to Rolling Stone Music Now wherever you get your podcasts. And please leave us five stars and a nice review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify because that's always appreciated. But as always, thanks so much for listening. And we will see you next week.

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