De La Soul

Why they matter

Kelvin “Posdnuos” Mercer, David “Trugoy the Dove” Jolicoeur and Vincent “Maseo” Mason formed De La Soul in high school in Amityville, Long Island. A demo of “Plug Tunin’” got them to producer Prince Paul, and Tommy Boy released 3 Feet High and Rising in February 1989.

Nothing else sounded like it. The samples came from doo-wop, psychedelic rock and children’s records as well as the usual funk and soul, the songs ignored standard structure, and a running game-show bit tied it together. It’s often credited with popularizing the rap skit. The group got tagged as hippies, hated it, and answered with De La Soul Is Dead (1991), its cover a broken daisy pot. They were part of the Native Tongues circle alongside A Tribe Called Quest, the Jungle Brothers and Queen Latifah, and Stakes Is High (1996) was their first record without Prince Paul, with J Dilla on the title track and an early look at Mos Def.

Then the business caught up. The Turtles sued over a sample on the debut. Later, the group’s Tommy Boy catalog couldn’t go to streaming or download stores because the sample licenses only covered physical media. That stayed true until 2023, after the group gained ownership of its masters and most samples were finally cleared; the ones that couldn’t be were replayed. Trugoy the Dove died weeks before the catalog went live.

What a working rapper can take from it

Read what your clearances actually cover. De La Soul’s samples were legal on vinyl and CD and nowhere else, and that one clause kept classic records off every platform for a generation. Any sample or license you sign should name the formats and territories. Get your songs registered and documented before release; the registration guide walks through it.

Dig wider than your genre. 3 Feet High stood out in 1989 because they sampled records nobody else in rap was touching. If every loop you flip comes from the same three soul compilations, you’ll sound like everybody else who owns them. The sample-chopping guide covers digging and flipping.

You can refuse the box people put you in. When the press decided they were a hippie act, they killed the image on the next cover. A second record is the best place to correct what people got wrong about the first.