It’s fair to say that De La Soul ‘haven’t been to a jam in quite a while’ when it comes to releasing new material. But that hasn’t stopped the titanic trio doing incredible things for the global music industry since the release of their last studio album 12 years ago.
De La Soul have managed to stay present in the pop music scene since their 2004 album ‘The Grind Date’, with pieces including what would become one of the most recognised verses in the Gorillaz 2005 hit ‘Feel Good Inc.’ along with numerous works across mixtapes and other collaborations.
The long wait between drinks brings us ‘And the Anonymous Nobody’.
Financed by an interesting take on the kickstarter campaign that gathered more than $600,000 (their original $110,000 being being met within hours of posting), De La Soul’s album will be available via a digital download & CD copy on the 26th August, with two singles having already been released.
Spending over 3 years & more than 200 hours of recording with the Rhythm Roots Allstars – a 10-piece funk band – to gather the music for the upcoming album, De La Soul collab with numerous artists including Usher, Snoop Dogg, David Byrne, 2 Chainz & Little Dragon.
This takes a bit of a twist from the group’s well known creative direction, who are recognised for their witty & complex lyrics tied in with the heavy use of samples from practically every genre under the sun, with ‘And the Anonymous Nobody’ being mostly sample free in its entirety.
The reason for this becomes very clear when understanding the difficulty that De La Soul has had in engaging their audience through their incredibly celebrated back catalog. Which over the years has been enduring and painful, both artistically and financially.
The Long Island collective’s renowned use of inventive samples would come back to haunt them during the dramatic rise of digital downloading & streaming. De La Soul faithfuls would probably know the pain of not being able to find their tracks anywhere from Spotify to Pandora.
Truth is that while surging to fame during the late 80’s, the legal terms of sampling wouldn’t have included anything on the idea of digital releasing. So sampling was only too easy for De La Soul – as an energetic way of enriching their powerful lyrics to the beat of effective hooks via the skills of group DJ, Vincent Mason.
Greed got the better of all those folks who gave up their samples on previously agreed terms, they’ve come out of the woodwork to prey on the group with claims for higher royalties & payouts upon any digital release. Because of this, none of their 6 albums had ever been available to digitally download or stream.
So in 2014, De La Soul – in a political/artistic stance – gave away almost their entire work.
In what was a massive online call-out to fans, the group distributed via zip.file a long list of some of their most recognised works, including their inaugural & platinum ‘3 Feet High and Rising’ album, which has been labeled as ‘a hip hop masterpiece’. Much to the discontent of their record label.
This exciting introduction to a new style by De La Soul has been much anticipated, and the releases of the tracks ‘Pain’ featuring Snoop Dogg earlier in the year & more recently ‘Drawn’, with help from Little Dragon, which will give the long-time lovers of De La Soul a big smile.
Also, as for the digitally unreleased back catalog – a kickstarter campaign for the release of that isn’t off the cards either…so watch this space.
Get very excited.
Words by Eamon O’Donnell
Image via @mariehennechart
