Manufacturer: Tommy Boy
Manufacturer: Tommy Boy Records
De La Soul burned out on their own hype fast, and their dark, strange second album is a counter-blast to their image and hip-hop culture: perverse, dissatisfied, sometimes brilliant, sometimes out of control. Occasionally it seems mean-spirited-- the single "Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)" finds them grousing about getting deluged by demo tapes; and "Kicked Out The House" is a nasty (if very funny) ...
De La Soul's debut, 3 Feet High & Rising, marked them as one of hip-hop's most creative, innovative forces; they were immediately marked out as the creative leaders of the innovative Native Tongues family. Ever since, De La has fought that image: their second album was called De La Soul is Dead; their fourth, Stakes is High, found them taking on a more hardcore, aggressive ...
De La's debut represented a new path for hip-hop, a reaction to conventions that had turned into clichés. It was friendly and playful enough to cross over to a pop audience (thanks to Prince Paul's production, which found the funk hiding inside Steely Dan and "Schoolhouse Rock"), but complicated and tough enough to be hugely influential in the hip-hop world. Cryptic but ecstatic, and sometimes ...
As if the genre didn't have enough stigmas to transcend, countless nostalgic compilations have done disco additional disservice by reducing the canon to a handful of obvious tunes trotted out endlessly. Fortunately, by including lesser-known gems like the Gibson Brothers' "Que Sera Mi Vida" next to classics by Sylvester, Dan Hartman, and Chic, the music supervisors of 54 have assembled ...
