Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
This one is really hard. R.I.P. to Dave Jolicoeur, aka Trugoy the Dove aka Plug Two of De La Soul, one of the greatest hip-hop groups of all time. Dead at 54. He was a legend. He was far too young and was on the verge of an exciting new phase of his career. After years of fighting with their label, De La’s catalog is finally about to be released on music streaming services, filling the thirst of a generation that grew up with them and surely bringing in new fans who never got to hear them because their classic music wasn’t available on the streamers before. That will change on March 3 and would have surely led to new visibility, new opportunities, new concerts, more money … but he suffered from congestive heart disease for years. No official cause of death has been given, but he’s gone.
De La emerged in 1989, a time when the leaders of hip-hop were towering superheroes from the inner city or brilliant pro-Black intellectuals. I was a high school student, living in the suburbs and attending private school. I had loved hip-hop from the first time I heard “Rapper’s Delight,” but I did not fully realize, could not yet articulate to myself that I saw Chuck D and Big Daddy Kane and KRS-One and Rakim as representing an impossible standard of masculinity. I loved them, but in many ways, I was nothing like them. Then “3 Feet High and Rising” came along. I got the cassette and put it in the deck in my little Honda. I made it through about 12 songs. It was cool but overly silly — there was a whole song in basic French and another where they said…
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