103. De La Soul, "Three Feet High And Rising"

 

Sorry for the service interruption!  Monday I had, like, work stuff to do and yesterday I was picking my wife up at the airport and they lost her bag and we had to file a claim about that and by the time I got home it was well into my Work Hours and you know, I'm just sorry.  (This was tail end of quite a journey for my wife that found her taking off in Ireland and landing in Newark, New Jersey, and then sitting in a plane for almost three hours and then the flight just getting cancelled and then staying in the Courtyard by Marriott in downtown Newark, NJ [not recommended, she says] and then getting on a flight to SFO at 6:30 am and finally getting back here a solid 14 hours later than expected.)

Speaking of the greater New York City metropolitan area, a group of kids from Amityville, Long Island, got together in 1988 and started making songs and released this album, one of the best in hip hop or any other genre, in 1989.  De La have been called the "Beatles of hip hop" (by Macy Gray, no less) and this album has been called the "Sgt. Pepper of hip hop."  This is a sobriquet that has been bestowed on a number of hip hop albums, including Paul's Boutique and All Eyez on Me but in this case, it's right.  This album is, in fact, the Sgt. Pepper of hip hop in the way it dizzylingly mixes sounds and musical ideas into a collage that seems inevitable now but was so groundbreaking at the time that it literally blew people's minds.  That's right, people's heads actually exploded when they heard this album.

What makes it like that?  Well, of course, it's the expert choosing and use of samples, along with the lyrical wordplay and the easy, loping style.  In contrast to NWA and Public Enemy, who both had just released Earth-shattering and, well, righteously angry records in the preceding 12 months, the voices on this record were welcoming, friendly, approachable.  There was room in hip hop for all kinds of messages.  From "The Magic Number," the seventh single from this incredible album:

Focus is formed by flaunts to the soul
Souls who flaunt styles gain praises by pounds
Common are speakers who are never scrolls
Scrolls written daily creates a new sound
Listeners listen 'cause this here is wisdom
Wisdom of a Speaker, a Dove and a Plug
Set aside a legal substance to feed 'em
For now get 'em high off this dialect drug
Time is a factor so it's time that counts
Count not the negative actions of one
Speakers of soul say it's time to shout
Three forms the soul to a positive sum
Dance to this fix and flex every muscle
Space can be filled if you rise like my lumber
Advance to the tune but don't do the hustle
Shake, rattle, roll to my Magic Number

This kind of shit got them labelled "hippies," which they loathed, not because it made them seem soft but because they were afraid it would box them in.  (Whether or not it did, and their reaction to that, is a whole other story.)

And the samples, like I said!  That song alone, "Magic Number," grabs from, of course, the Schoolhouse Rock song, the ubiquitous Funky Drummer beat, Eddie Murphy's "Hit by a Car," and Johnny Cash's "Five Feet High and Rising," among others.  De La were such inveterate crate-diggers that Tommy Boy Records sponsored a contest for the first fan who could identify the sample on "Plug Tunin'," and it went unclaimed.  (The song was "Written on the Wall" by doo-wop group The Invitations.)  "Eye Know," track nine, sampled Steely Dan's "Peg," "Dock of the Bay," and Sly's "Sing a Simple Song."  And they're all like that!  The album is a concise history of popular music, with the added benefit of fantastic added vocals.

Did I really suffer the delays I talked about at the top of this piece, or did I just want to spend two extra days listening to this album?  WE WILL NEVER KNOW.

Is this album in my personal Top 500? Personal Top 100, easy.