Deep Album Cuts Vol. 303: De La Soul
I ranked De La Soul's albums for Spin a few weeks ago after the news of Trugoy's death broke. But now De La Soul's back catalog is finally available in full to stream for the first time ever, and I was pretty happy to put together a playlist I never thought I'd be able to make.
De La Soul deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):
1. Description f/ Q-Tip and Prince Paul
De La Soul deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):
1. Description f/ Q-Tip and Prince Paul
2. Change In Speak
3. Ghetto Thang
4. D.A.I.S.Y. Age
5. Pass The Plugs f/ Prince Paul
6. Bitties In The BK Lounge f/ LeShaun
7. Let, Let Me In
8. Pease Porridge
9. Area
10. I Am I Be f/ Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley, and Peewee Ellis
11. Eye Patch
12. Pony Ride f/ Truth Enola
13. Supa Emcees
14. The Bizness f/ Common
15. The Art Of Getting Jumped
16. Thru Ya City f/ D.V. Alias Khrist
17. Bionix
18. The Grind Date
19. He Comes f/ Ghostface Killah
20. Small Disasters with DJ Chokolate and DJ Khalid Music
21. Memory Of... (Us) f/ Estelle and Pete Rock
Tracks 1, 2, 3 and 4 from 3 Feet High And Rising (1989)
Tracks 5, 6, 7 and 8 from De La Soul Is Dead (1991)
Tracks 9, 10 and 11 from Buhloone Mindstate (1993)
Tracks 12, 13 and 14 from Stakes Is High (1996)
Tracks 15 and 16 from Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump (2000)
Track 17 from AOI: Bionix (2001)
Tracks 18 and 19 from The Grind Date (2004)
Track 20 from De La Soul's Plug 1 & Plug 2 Present... First Serve (2012)
Track 21 from And The Anonymous Nobody... (2016)
When I rank an artist's catalog for Spin, I try to strike some measure of compromise between my own opinions and conventional wisdom, and I'm glad I summoned the confidence to put De La Soul Is Dead at #1, I really think it's probably one of the 10 best rap albums of all time. It was hard to even narrow down which songs to include from those early albums, they're just so jam-packed with great songs.
I do feel a little bad that I had to rank the AOI albums so low because De La didn't really make any bad albums. "Thru Ya City" was produced by J Dilla, whose most famous De La beat is obviously "Stakes Is High." And Supa Dave West, who did a lot of great later De La tracks, produced "Bionix," "The Grind Date," "He Comes," and "Memory of... (Us)." And obviously all the early stuff was produced by the group with Prince Paul.
There was a lot of trepidation when word got out that De La Soul had to re-record parts of these albums to get them ready to legally stream -- I've heard a lot of rap songs absolutely ruined by the need to replace uncleared samples. But I'm thrilled to say that these albums sound great on Spotify and while I've seen a few people point out moments where samples had to be replayed, I haven't noticed them much myself and certainly nothing that's actively detracted from my enjoyment of the songs, they did a great job and, fortunately, I guess were able to clear the really essential stuff. It's pretty much a fun coincidence that this became Vol. 303 in the Deep Album Cuts series, 3 really is the magic number.
De La's first two albums came out before feature credits became a normal part of tracklist credits for rap albums, so I wanted to add credits for those songs. And I was surprised to realize that the woman who does the hilarious battle-of-the-sexes verse with Posdnous on "Bitties In The BK Lounge" is LeShaun, who later appeared on LL Cool J's classic "Doin' It." It's hard not to wonder if she could've been one of the biggest female rappers of the '90s if she'd gotten to make a solo album.
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on Wednesday, March 08, 2023 at 9:23 AM.
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