March 3, 1989 was the day that changed
the scope of hip hop music forever. A young hip hop trio from Amityville, Long
Island, released their inventive, exciting, and extraordinary debut album 3 Feet High and Rising. De La Soul are comprised
of Kelvin Mercer,
a.k.a (Posdnuos/ Plug One), David Jude Jolicoeur (Trugoy the Dove/Dave/Plug Two) and Vincent Mason (P.A. Pasemaster Mase/Maseo/Plug Three). An opposition to the
gangsta rap that was taking over hip hop culture at the time, 3 Feet High and Rising was a
kaleidoscope of sounds that brought hundreds of obscure samples, peaceful
“hippie” ideologies, street knowledge, love, and other eclectic, obscure topics
all into one album. It was a masterpiece that is regarded as one of the
greatest timeless hip hop albums, and music critics and fans alike acknowledge
its historical importance and impact for the genre and for popular music; and
it also exemplified the creativity that goes into the production and roles of
producers of a sample based hip hop album. Although it is inaccessible on
digital formats, 3 Feet High and Rising
is an album that music lovers strive to collect on all other formats because it
reflected a time when hip hop music honestly exposed the desire for artists to
connect to their fans on an emotional and spiritual level.
All three of De La
Soul’s members grew up in separate boroughs of New York, but all met and attended
high school in Amityville, Long Island. Posdnuos and Dave, the two emcees, were
originally in a group called Easy Street in 1985. Posdnuos and Dave had different
roles; Pos was the DJ (his stage name was his DJ name backwards – DJ Sound Sop)
and Dave, who went by his middle name Jude, was a beatboxer. Eventually, Pos
and Dave split from the group to form their own group. A friend of theirs
introduced them to the future third member of De La Soul – P.A. Pasemaster Mase.
DJ Maseo (what he is now referred to as), who was a year younger than the other
two members, had earned a reputation of being one of the more popular DJs in
town. De La Soul was an official group by 1986. Although the group was formed,
they weren’t quite “established”. In comes their savior, DJ Prince Paul, born
Paul Huston, a DJ from the live old school hip hop band Stetsasonic. According
to the book “Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip Hop Junkies” by music
journalist Brian Coleman, Prince Paul was given the De La Soul demo tape by
Maseo and added more elements to it to make it come alive. Prince Paul tells
Coleman in his book about one of the first De La Soul songs: “That demo was a rough
sketch of the song ‘Plug Tunin’ and I really liked it. I did a two-tape-decks
thing where I overdubbed some beats and added other things to what they had
done originally” (Coleman 145). This pivotal moment brings in Prince Paul as
the main producer of the album. Coleman adds; “When Paul heard De La’s rough
demos, a light bulb flashed. Paul’s budding genius behind the boards was just
waiting to be unleashed, and he put it to work in his role as ‘mentor’” (Coleman
148). Paul and De La Soul both worked together on the production of the album,
but De La Soul are credited as the co-producers. It was a team effort, but
Prince Paul put a magical touch on the music that no other producer could have.
In her book “Rap Music
and Street Consciousness”, Cheryl Keyes, an associate professor of
ethnomusicology at UCLA, traces, analyzes, and discusses the history of hip hop
in various larger contexts. She acknowledges Prince Paul’s golden ears, magical
touch, and his musical choices when producing and sampling music for De La
Soul:
“Prince Paul’s
aptitude for selecting unique breaks for the accompanying soundtracks (e.g. the
use of Funkadelic’s funk classic “(Not Just) Knee Deep” for their hit single,
“Me, Myself, and I”) enhanced De La Soul’s music. Recognized for his funky
beats, Paul credits P-Funk master George Clinton for influencing his vision for
De La Soul: “I evolved the whole De La Soul thing around George Clinton at
first, the characters, the visuals, the illness’” (Keyes 83).
De La Soul’s music, like most hip hop music at the time, was
strictly sample based. Each song had samples intertwined with more samples, and
ultimately became a melting pot of various genres like rock, disco, funk, and
obscure pop. An album review by author Bruce Tucker found on jstor.org
summarizes their sound perfectly: “De La Soul’s shards and fragments are
assembled in collages where the seams and jagged edges are meant to show”. The
creativity that went into the production of the album was immense, and the
album became heralded as one of the greatest sample based hip hop albums, along
with Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique
and Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of
Millions to Hold Us Back. The book “Making Beats: The Art of Sample Based
Hip-Hop” by Joe Schloss is focused primarily on the creation and methods used
by hip hop producers in order to create, manipulate, or enhance their records.
Schloss discusses the importance of sampling to producers:
“A number of people
have written about how hip-hop sampling – because it used old sound recordings
– represents and engagement with musical history in various ways (Rose 1994,
Gaunt 1995, Potter 1995). It is true that hip-hop producers comment on, play
with, flip, remake, and relive history. But it is not so much the history of a
community or even of a musical form that producers are interested in, but the
history of sound recordings...” (Schloss 157).
Hip hop producers have a strong connection to the music they
grew up with; the music their parents played in their homes. These producers
want to share the same feelings of excitement and passion that they grew up
hearing in their own records they create. They take the sounds from older
records and recreate them for modern times to show off their skills as a
talented producer, to allow listeners to become exposed to other genres of
music, and to also show their appreciation to the musicians they idolize. This
is exactly what Prince Paul and De La Soul accomplished in 3 Feet High and Rising. Sampling Hall & Oates, Johnny Cash,
James Brown, among other artists, exemplified the wide eclectic palate of music
each grew up admiring and desired to put on their records. The art of sampling
brought the role of the hip hop producer to a brand new light.
In hip hop, the term
“producer” is often misunderstood. Hip hop producers are primarily the people
who create the beat or the music for the emcee to rap on. They may also oversee
the recording and try to help the artist create a sonic landscape for their
album; but hip hop and rock producers usually take on two different roles. Hip
hop producers could, in a sense, be compared to composers, because they compose
and arrange the music by taking samples, using drum machines, or using computer
technology. Schloss describes his idea of a hip hop producer:
“For hip-hop producers
the process of creating recorded music has become almost completely estranged
from the process of capturing the sound of a live performance… conversely, live
performances of hip hop are rarely concerned with reproducing any specific
processes from the studio *aside from emceeing); the studio recording is simply
played (and sometimes manipulated by a deejay)” (Schloss 41).
Hip hop producers generally have a recognizable “sound” that
they perfect when working with different artists. They can work on any artist’s
album they want, but fans will know who produced it just by the way the song or
album structure is set. De La Soul and Prince Paul share production credits for
the album because they all gathered the ideas for the album together. Some
members were still unsure of what production actually involved, but it all
became clear once each person actually worked hand in hand; Dave says:
“I didn’t have a concept of what a producer
was until I learned more about the game. The way I was introduced to production
was with what we did. From the start, with us, it was like every man puts in
their ten cents. And let’s make this into a dollar. We learned, mostly from
Paul, that you don’t always need to map things out. You can make mistakes. And the
zaniness of the album, overall definitely came from Paul” (Coleman 149).
De La Soul and Prince Paul recorded their demo in Calliope
Studios, NY. After their three track demo with songs “Plug Tunin’,” “Freedom of
Speak,” and “De La Games” (later “D.A.I.S.Y. Age”), an indie hip hop record
label created by Tom Silverman, Tommy Boy Records, felt that De La Soul was
just what they were looking for. In 1987, they signed with Tommy Boy, and in 1988
they saw their first single released, which was “Plug Tunin’”. The song
“Potholes in My Lawn” came soon after. Luckily these singles did well, so Tommy
Boy gave them the OK to create a full album. The recording process was
virtually painless. The A&R for De La Soul, Dante “Dante the Scrubb” (as De
La referred to him as) Ross states that,
“They basically made
that record in the studio because they didn’t have their own equipment yet, so
they couldn’t do much at home except brainstorm ideas”. Coleman adds; “The
album didn’t take long because they all have been milling around with ideas
together. According to Tom Silverman, their recording budget was twenty-eight
thousand dollars, which included all recording costs, sample clearance fees,
and their own advances”. ‘They got lower advances’, says Tom Silverman, ‘but
after the album blew up they got paid massive royalty checks. They bought
houses for all of their parents after that.’” (Coleman 147).
At first, De La Soul was met with some criticism from hip hop
fans. They were portrayed as “hip hop hippies” because of the way they dressed,
their peaceful, playful lyrics, their usage of daises on their album cover, and
the ultimate pushing of the label to make sure they were marketed as hippies. 3 Feet High and Rising also saw the
advent of what they refer to as the Da.I.S.Y. Age, which stood for “Da Inner
Sound, Y’all”. The Da.I.S.Y. Age was a sound and vibe that reflected their
feelings about how their music was created, because it was quite literally
“from the soul” and the inner sounds of their hearts and minds were poured out
on their music to spread peace and happiness in a genre that was overcome with
violence. Unfortunately, artists and fans who were used to more violent and misogynistic
hip hop did not understand this concept at first. De La Soul did not want to be
seen as hippies just because they wanted to share positivity in their music. They
made sure to tear all that stigma down when it came time for their 2nd
album, which they wittingly named De La
Soul is Dead (their album cover is a dead daisy in a broken flower pot).
Overall, De La Soul’s
debut has been lauded as one of the greatest hip hop albums that stood the test
of time; it was a phenomenon; and was no match lyrically, musically, or
thematically to any other hip hop album released at the time. It became so
important to the genre because it allowed a new generation of hip hop artists
to understand that being yourself does not mean acting like someone else. Being
yourself means just that. It was okay to step outside and around the box to
make a statement, and to wear African medallions and sport funny haircuts. No
one needed to know how much money, cars, houses, or women you had, or how tough
you were. The music was a lighthearted eye opener for hip hop and music fans in
general, and was a perfect window into the lives of three young men from Long
Island that had some knowledge to spread to the masses, while also having fun
with it.
Tom Silverman mentions
the lasting global impact the album had: “Aside from the U.S., that album was
also important because it was the first hip-hop album on the international
scene; it was the first album to do more than five hundred thousand units in
Europe, way more than even Run-DMC” (Coleman 151). The only negative impact
this album had was due to its unfortunate lawsuit of copyright infringement
because of one of the album interludes. De La’s interlude “Transmitting Live from
Mars” samples rock group The Turtles’ 1969 song “You Showed Me”. The Turtles
saw that De La had used their song without permission; therefore they sued. There
was some misunderstanding between De La Soul and Tommy Boy on why the sample
was not given to the label to clear, and/or why they label neglected to clear
the sample. Both Silverman and Prince Paul have differing views on this topic.
Silverman says, “The problem was that although we cleared thirty-five samples
on the album, the Turtles one wasn’t on the list that the group gave us,
because it was one of the interstitial pieces”. Prince Paul says, “When we
finished the album we gave Tommy Boy all the samples and they just cleared the
ones on songs that they thought would be popular” (Coleman 153). Tommy Boy and
De La Soul lost the suit, and had to pay more than $100,000 (some sources say
up to 1.7 million). After this lawsuit, hip hop music had to take a step back
and make sure if they were to use samples in their music, all sampled needed to
be legally cleared. The worst outcome about this whole situation was that the
majority of De La Soul’s catalog has never been available to purchase digitally;
it is only available on LP, CD, and cassette. Billboard.com writer Paul Cantor keeps
the reason why their music is unavailable digitally short and sweet: “there are
too many samples on the album, Warner Brothers— which owns Tommy Boy Records'
catalog— does not want to go through the legwork to re-clear them all for
digital rights”.
On February 15, 2014, De La Soul released
their back catalog for free on their website to celebrate their 25th
anniversary of being a group, and to show love to their fans by sharing their
work. By sharing their music without the permission of Warner, and the fact
that they got their music from a Russian torrent site to send to their fans,
they could be in a lot of trouble. De La Soul did not care, though, because
they listened to the Da.I.S.Y. and gave their fans proof that it’s all about
the music and the love of their fans is what keeps them motivated.
No comments:
Post a Comment