De La Soul

“Fly rhymes are stored in a Da.I.S.Y. production/ It stands for ‘Da Inner Sound, Y’All’ and y’all can bet”, raps Posdnuos at one point in “The Magic Number”, a sort of hybrid between free sampling and a free reinterpretation of Bob Dorough’s popular 1973 hit (ambiguously famous in Italy too, ed.). His partner Trugoy answers him rhyme for rhyme, mirroring him on the closing track, “D.A.I.S.Y. Age”: “The soul will let you know it’s time/ And it’s a daisy age”. This ambiguity between soul, soul music, daisies and coded acrostics underpins the whole record: the group’s Latin-tinged name – De La Soul – the cover art, with the three faces arranged like petals and cartoonish graffiti daisies blessing them, the number three as the perfect, “magic” number, the liberating, anachronistically “peace and love” concept. Everything conspires to make “3 Feet High And Rising” a bastard, extemporaneous entity, however explosive and disruptive it may certainly be – an urgent passing comet, a manifesto whose task is to state its own eccentric but conscientious message, and then vanish.

Let’s start from the beginning. In the mid-Eighties, Kelvin Mercer and David Jolicoeur are two friends and classmates at high school in Long Island. Out in the suburb of Amityville, they amuse themselves sampling dozens of vintage 45s, mostly R&B but not only that. Mercer, the studious one of the pair, is already a budding producer under the tag “Sound-Sop”. Jolicoeur follows suit, freestyling rhymes, twisting words together, inventing phrases. The two then start building their own tracks, gradually taking on new identities: Mercer flips his old nickname, from “Sound-Sop” to “Posdnuos”, while Jolicoeur flips the name of his favourite snack, yogurt, into “Trugoy” (later also known as “The Dove”). Looking on, amused, is a third figure, more on the fringes of the project but nonetheless democratically welcomed by the two founders thanks to their shared feeling and artistic vision, and even promoted to the role of master of ceremonies: Vincent Mason, aka “Pasemaster Mase”, in a sense the frontman, the face of the group (if one were ever needed). Thus are born De La Soul.

Picking up on the term “Golden Age” coined by critics to describe (with remarkable foresight, as it turned out) rap music’s golden era, then raging across the whole East Coast, the fledgling posse conjures up the coming of the “Daisy Age” – actually spelled “D.A.I.S.Y.” – the advent of the inner sound, of vital harmony. Against the violence of the ghetto, the rivalries between armed gangs, lives shattered by drugs and racially motivated killings – but also against their distortion into poses, fashions and clichés – the trio set up hip-hop’s equivalent of psychedelic flower-power: peace, love and equality, an era of balance and joie de vivre, of liberating fun, even of naive lightness of spirit. Naive, because at first the group goes a little overboard, perhaps taking themselves too seriously in a sci-fi concept indebted to Allen and Bowie, in which they imagine themselves as microphones and plugs – they would rename themselves, once again, as Plug 1 (Mercer), Plug 2 (Jolicoeur) and Plug 3 (Mason) – broadcasting improbably from Mars. The blueprint for the concept is their first demo, “Plug Tunin’” (1988).

The demo lands in the right hands at the right time. Tom Silverman, head of Tommy Boy, predictably isn’t all that interested in this fanciful concept: what he loves is their delivery, at once dorky and determined, the almost rough-hewn poverty of the sound, its sheer, superior contagiousness. He senses a big opportunity: he packages the track as a single, remixes it, and instructs the trio to finish the record.

The full-length, their exuberant debut “3 Feet High And Rising”, isn’t long in coming, and the results exceed every expectation. What remains “Martian” about it is the use of sampling, at once wonderfully free and surgically crafted, and above all the constant parade – as in a lysergic vaudeville show – of gestures and inventions, of witty, carefree yet sharp commentary, and of loose-limbed skits bordering on stand-up comedy.

One of the record’s high points is the gorgeous, generational uptempo cut “Eye Know”, with its deafening whistling, breezy guitar, disillusioned rappers and stray shards of backing vocals (though it’s essentially a remix of Steely Dan’s “Peg”). Another highlight is certainly the bouncy, rubbery “Me Myself And I”, supersonic in its synths and its thrilling rhythmic syncopation, and a stern statement of individual reflection. Exotic, tribal exhalations then rise from the old-school soul looped continuously on “Change In Speak”, with its conversational, almost confidential rap. Just a notch below are “Tread Water”, a “concrete” splashing sound (achieved simply by scratching vowels on the turntable), with an insistent, exquisitely retro toy piano, and the loose-limbed funk of “Potholes In My Lawn”, broken up by a yodel and then a jumble of scratched vowels.

The practical answer to the gangsta-rap trend of rival peers N.W.A, Ice Cube and co. arrives in two key moments: the venomous, almost subliminal beat running through “Ghetto Thang” (with a chorus built from electronics and random spoken samples), and then the well-known guitar sample used as a kind of graffiti “signature” on “Say No Go”, driven by the most relentless rap relay yet between Posdnuos and Trugoy, though still built entirely on that locomotive rhythm, pumped up by the bass. A great example of collective interplay (featuring Q-Tip and two members of the Jungle Brothers) is “Buddy”, a spectral soul cut dominated by the chaining together of narratives, at times almost in free form. And the already-mentioned closing manifesto “D.A.I.S.Y Age” also holds one last trick up its sleeve, a stuttering beat full of dizzying pauses. Sly yet spectacular too is “Jenifa Taught Me”, with a similar stop-start beat, introduced by lysergic turntable noise and built around a collage featuring a schoolroom toy piano.

A record within the record are the interludes, the “skits”, closer to sitcoms or soap operas. Kicked off by a spoken “Intro” acting as an amused roll call, things range from the orgasmic little shrieks of “De La Orgee” to the loose freestyle railing against consumerist posturing of “Do As De La Does”; from the highly creative beatboxing of “I Can Do Anything” we move on to enjoy the radio-style sampler rapping of “Cool Breeze On The Rocks”, right up to the hilarious, stumbling French conversation of “Transmitting Live From Mars”. “Take It Off” tests the trio’s ability to build dramatic harmonies using only the most bare-bones rhythm track.

But the most important innovation, one hardly exploited even by their followers, lies in “Can U Keep A Secret”, a truly rare case of a collective rap performed entirely in hushed tones. It’s the triumph of a superbly communicative nonsense, and of their preference for expressing themselves through situations and surprises rather than traditional words and arrangements. A second path within their manifesto.

Several factors contribute to the greatness of the Long Island trio’s debut long-player (Long Island county, incidentally, has one of the lowest crime rates in the whole of the US): the production by fellow Long Islander Paul “Prince Paul” Huston, the fourth De La Soul member and also the mentor who launched them; the extraordinary, Zappa-esque variety of the episodes, like an engrossing little theatre show; the sure-handed mastery of the finishing touches, the surprise entrances, the seams between voice and backing tracks; the contagious propulsion of the rhythms, the element from which the record’s pervasive enthusiasm most spontaneously springs; and the dialectical richness in laying out a cultural, or subcultural, vision, and thus an unrepeatable period whose repercussions are still felt today. There’s all that love for the cheap sampler and for Clinton-esque funk (but also the far-sighted soft-rock of Hall & Oates, Eric Burdon, Johnny Cash, Jefferson Starship and various others) that the otherwise legendary Ultramagnetic MC’s hadn’t quite pulled off the year before. If Clinton had invented psychedelic funk, the trio invents, playfully too, psychedelic hip-hop. And it stands as the sumptuous bridge between homemade sounds and the pacifist aesthetic of Afrika Bambaataa and the avant-garde sampling of DJ Shadow. The first CD pressing affectionately includes the original version of “Plug Tunin’”. Its B-side, “Freedom Of Speak”, can be found on the bonus disc of the deluxe edition (2001). Among the follow-ups, all clearly inferior and uneven, the best is “Buhloone Mindstate” (1993), though that’s a different story altogether.

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12/08/2018