I stayed up until midnight on March 3, 2023, for one reason and one reason only: so I could pull up “De La Soul is Dead” — the five-mic-rated sophomore album from De La Soul — on Spotify and stream it. The entire early Tommy Boy Records catalog of De La Soul hit all streaming services on March 3, and it felt like Christmas to me.
And I was tired, boss. I flew into Atlanta earlier that morning to drive to Tuskegee University to attend my nephew’s probate show and then drove back to Atlanta that night to try to catch some sleep to fly back to Washington, D.C., the next morning. So, even though I clearly needed to get some sleep, I needed to stay up until midnight so I could see all of the albums — “3 Feet High and Rising,” “De La Soul is Dead,” “Buhloone Mindstate,” “Stakes Is High,” “Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump,” and “AOI: Bionix” — available for streaming, ensuring that a legacy rap act’s actual legacy was available for the world to hear.
It felt important, especially for me. My favorite album of all time has long been “De La Soul is Dead.” Like all important things in life, that album has been part of my identity as a music head, origin story included. I learned of De La Soul and that particular album from a young lady friend of mine in 7th grade who told me I needed to listen to the tape she was listening to. She changed my life and didn’t even know it. That was in 1991, and here we are in 2023 and I’m still emotionally invested in how I first heard it and what it means to me. That, my friends, is proof-positive of how a group makes art that matters.
And it matters even more now. On Feb. 12,…
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