— Harriet Dell
It was 1968 and pop music was going through yet another sea change. The Beatles released the so-called White Album. The Byrds put out the influential Sweetheart of the Rodeo. The Beach Boys delivered Wild Honey at the tail end of the '67 and followed it with Friends, both of which had dialled back from the days of 'pocket symphonies' "California Girls" and "Good Vibrations". The Kinks offered up The Village Green Preservation Society, their highly unsuccessful masterpiece. The Band emerged from the shadow of Bob Dylan with Music from the Big Pink. Dylan himself ended '67 with the sparse and Biblical John Wesley Harding. Meanwhile, Elvis Presley was returning to relevance with his hugely popular comeback.
These albums (and, in Elvis' case, performance) don't share much in common with each other but they are typically described today in a similar manner. All of these acts, the story goes, were going against the psychedelic grain of the time by serving up gritty roots rock, passionate R&B and/or simpler folk and country-influenced material. This, then, begs the question: if all of these rock giants were turning their backs on acid rock by this time, who was still persisting with it? (Actually, there were plenty but that's not the point)
Hip hop acts faced a not dissimilar reputational disadvantage in the late-eighties. The image of rappers as proudly showing off their bling and boasting of how great they and their money are was difficult to shake. Thinking off the top of my head, I can recall a lot of groups signed to Def Jam and most of them failed to fit in with that image of the narcissistic rap star. Public Enemy (see below) and NWA put out some extraordinary records that also placed them as hard hitting civil rights spokesmen. LL Cool J was cut from a similar cloth only he chose to be a more positive voice. Run-DMC were entertainers, Erik B & Rakim were artists and the Beastie Boys were clowns sending up macho rap posing. If they were all going against the bling grain, just who was keeping it going?
And, yet, this idea of rappers being obnoxious show-offs wouldn't go away. Graeme Kay named Run-DMC's "Mary, Mary" the Single of the Fortnight, praising it as "refreshingly free of all that guff that rappers usually go on about i.e. "Look how tough, wonderful and fabulously rich I am"". Ten months later and it's the same scenario: De La Soul were supposedly flouting the conventions of a hip hop movement that wasn't nearly as commonplace as people believed.
Still, even alongside the likes of LL Cool J and Run-DMC, De La Soul stood out. If rap had a downside it was in its near-universal earnestness. Hip hop had a message and its purveyors would be damned if they weren't going to express it. Kelvin Mercer, Dave Jolicoeur and Vincent Mason took on stage names but they eschewed the usual M.C. prefix, initial suffix and none of them claimed to be a professor. In choosing to go with the monikers Posdnuos, Trugoy and Maseo respectively, De La Soul were marked out as playful and silly — and even as hippies, even if the trio denied themselves.
Their first hit came out in the UK in the spring of 1989. "Me, Myself and I" was a head turning single but one that listeners didn't know quite what to make of. British rap had been the preserve of more boastful types who at least had pop hooks to make their records — Derek B's "Bad Young Brother", the Wee Papa Girl Rappers' "Wee Rule" — appear to be better than they were; "Me, Myself and I" had something to it but it lacked the immediacy of these lightweight hip hop affairs. It was going to take the kids time to get used to De La Soul.
As if acknowledging that their previous hit was a bit of a throwaway, the trio got serious for follow-up "Say No Go". Normally whenever a band goes from lighthearted to painfully glum it becomes clear that they're heading for the dumper but the opposite happens in this case. While "Me, Myself and I" tried a little too hard to be witty, the serious subject matter of hardcore drugs on the streets better suits the rapping talents of both Posdnuos and Turgoy. Much more earnest individuals have tackled narcotics in song but their achievement is to deal with it in a fashion that is relatable but never hectoring. Verses roll off their tongues in a manner that few in rap could hope to replicate. They don't trivialize the experience nor do they go over-serious. It's all very matter-of-fact.
The heavy subject matter of the lyrics is nicely contrasted by a relentlessly catchy tune, complimented by a memorable sample of "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)" by Hall & Oates, with added touches from the likes of Sly Stone and The Detroit Emeralds. The practice of borrowing from sources outside of hip hop and its antecedents was still relatively new at the time and it showed that De La Soul had catholic interests. If they had wanted to prove that they could go against the grain of macho hip hop head games then using smooth eighties' white soulsters was a genius move.
"Say No Go" showed a modest improvement on "Me, Myself and I" and gave De La Soul their first UK Top 20 hit and set a trend by which they turned the law of decreasing returns on its head with the four singles taken from the 3 Feet High and Rising album. The LP was getting very encouraging reviews and the public were beginning to accept them. They were so much more than comedy goofballs and nutty hippies — and, indeed, much more than chroniclers of strife in the ghetto. They were able to do whatever they wanted within rap and they weren't even above a bit of posing, even at a time when hardly anyone was doing it anymore.
~~~~~
Also of some cop
Public Enemy: "Fight the Power"
Hip hop wasn't my cup of tea back in '89 which only makes me wonder why not. (Oh right, it was all the obnoxious white people hung up on its "message" that turned me off) Public Enemy are perhaps the most well-remembered rap act of the time but they manage to combine all that is wonderful and annoying about the genre. Their early work is the most effective and by the time of "Fight the Power" it was as if Chuck D was far too caught up in his role as a voice for his generation to be bothered much with crafting great records. The more spotlight-friendly Flava Flav joins his nibs in a display of unity but it isn't quite enough to inject some much needed fun. Exciting but it could've been so much more. But, hey, it has a message!
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