David Jude Jolicoeur 1968 -2023 – Thank you!
I love De La Soul’s music. It struck a nerve with me. For a young African American kid living in working class, middle class and Black and White spaces it was refreshing. It had a resonance and sense of humor that I could relate to though I’m from the West Coast ,San Francisco Bay Area. White kids listed to it too. It was like a siren that I yielded too. Pot Holes In My Lawn reminds of the time a girl, my next door neighbor got locked out of her house. I had given her a soda. The next day I was playing Pot Holes In My Lawn through the tv and stereo my dad hooked up and it was loud and when I looked out the window I could see the neighbor and another girl dancing like girls the video. It looked cool. I smiled. I can’t remember what happened to her. but I remember what happened to me. An era of Black life that most still don’t understand or know even exists – another dimension.
Their early music was cool, funny and direct in that it made me think about the importance of maintaining oneself. To strive, which is what I felt from all the rap music I listened to or sometimes taped off of KPOO in Oakland late at night, onto a cassette and I felt like I had found King Tuts Tomb. It was exciting and daring and new and unlike anything else that had existed about what I knew and I thought I knew about music. Hip Hop Culture provided that vehicle that I could journey in. There was something innocent yet bold about it and we gravitated to it like our bicycles that gave us freedom.
Transmitting Live From Mars, I could listen to it all day. It was funky and playful and kept our lives in heavy rotation like Me Myself and I. It made us feel confident and bold and united as Black People to see ourselves in the video in the artists we liked and the messages that made us dream and connect in our own language.
Ghetto Thang grew on me late. Take It Off was funny. We wanted more and they gave it to us. The collaborations with Leaders of The New School, Queen Latifa, Money Love, Jungle Brothers, Tribe Called Quest – they were the Native Tongues we could all relate to. It was dope and so was the style and the sampling made the music go. The sample era ushered them in and us into a new technological age.
Prince Paul was one piece of the puzzle to the trio but it was part of a Hip Hop cultural movement that needed a voice to an emerging culture that at the time was still mostly misunderstood by mainstream music – those outside the culture. it’s crazy to see people buying and collecting records and flashing them on Instagram while some of us have been in the know for years but that what’s it’s about – awareness. Black music has messages in it, they vary like in any other genre of music. Some of them are entertaining and some of them are meant to sting or bring us joy. With todays technology image seems to be more important than content.
Three Feet High and Rising, Balloon Mind State, AOI Bionics, The Grind Date and many other albums kept us entertained over the years. Some albums were hits and others were misses, there was also in the early days getting their stage act together, but those are struggles a successes all artists face. It was great to see them live, even with my sister, we were in heaven! They laid the ground work for many artist to follow in their path to take chances and to be themselves.
Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Ha Hey) I got it. The highs and lows of fame and the hawkers. Stakes is High was a come back album to me and the opening question about where were you when you first heard criminal minded was dialectical. The Business, Supa Emcees and Itzoweezee are classics in my mind. It’s just funny how my ear doesn’t match the critics but then again what were they looking for and did De La even care.
De La Soul wanted to entertain us as well as inform us about Black life and Black culture and how to stay on the path of Hip Hop and Rap to keep the culture progressive as well as creative. Years of litigation over sampling and masters didn’t hamper their creativity and longevity. They brought hip hop to where they were appreciated. Trugoy / Plug was a part of that legacy. I don’t know what I would have done without hearing De La Soul, or other rap artists I admire. At times Rap kept me sane in a world that always seems bi-polar. The stakes are still high!