DE LA SOUL
Kentish Town Forum, London NW5, Aug 2
(020-7344 0044)
AMID THE tiresome sounds of the record industry bemoaning its lot, De La Soul’s present predicament is a real eye-opener. Their return to the Forum, which they sold out six weeks ago, follows appearances at Glastonbury and other European festivals, yet the group is at present without a label, and its new single arrives on its own imprint.
De La Soul (including Posdnuos) formed during high school in Long Island, in the mid-Eighties. Digging into their parents’ record collections, they recorded a debut that became a benchmark not only in rap history but across the whole of popular music. Sampling everyone from George Clinton and James Brown to Hall & Oates, Johnny Cash and Billy Joel, their album 3 Feet High and Rising, released in 1989, contained a rampant eclecticism that proved that hip-hop was capable of more than the darker textures of the day, and introduced the music to a new audience.
Unhappy with the way the record’s sound overshadowed their skills as rappers, De La Soul did not build on their initial pop success. Hip-hop fans have reaped the benefit, as albums such as Buhloone Mind State and Stakes is High exhibited their dazzling microphonics — and the two parts of the Art Official Intelligence album trilogy so far released have maintained their creative high.
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At its early commercial peak, the group was at best a variable live attraction. An appearance at the Reading Festival, where they drove around the stage in Day-Glo golf carts, lives in the mind for all the wrong reasons. But in tandem with their redevelopment as hip-hop underdogs has come a no-nonsense approach to live performance. They may have shunned their role as reinventors of the hip-hop wheel, but the music business deserves all its problems if it is ready to give up on De La Soul.
Angus Batey