De La Soul emerged as an innovative powerhouse within hip-hop. Their 1989 debut record, 3 Feet High and Rising, arrived with a distinctive colorful and nearly collaged production style paired with rhymes that balanced sharp wit and playful absurdity. This placed the group as a milder yet singularly inventive act amid a scene dominated by forceful aggression and pointed outrage. Drawing from funk and soul alongside pop, jazz, reggae, and psychedelia, they assembled an eccentric and magnetic tapestry of sampled sounds. They stayed independent of shifting fashions in rap, pursuing their chosen direction without compromise. Their 1990s releases proved foundational across the genre, as 1991's De La Soul Is Dead and 1996's Stakes Is High supplied abundant creative blueprints for later artists across multiple generations. After issuing 2004's The Grind Date, the group entered a period of inactivity before resurfacing in 2016 with the crowd-funded And the Anonymous Nobody together with sporadic standalone singles. In 2023, following extended legal conflicts over rights and ownership, De La Soul secured control of their catalog and achieved the first streaming releases of several landmark albums.
The three members formed De La Soul while attending high school in the late 1980s: Posdnuos (Kelvin Mercer), Trugoy the Dove (David Jude Jolicoeur), and Pasemaster Mase (Vincent Lamont Mason, Jr.). Each stage name originated from private jokes, with Posdnuos reversing Mercer's earlier DJ moniker Sound-Sop and Trugoy reversing Jolicoeur's preferred food, yogurt. Their demo Plug Tunin' reached Prince Paul, leader and producer of the New York rap group Stetsasonic. He shared the recording with associates and helped secure the trio a deal with Tommy Boy Records.
Prince Paul handled production on the debut album 3 Feet High and Rising, issued in spring 1989. Reviewers and commentators tagged the group as neo-hippie because the project celebrated peace and love while announcing the arrival of "the D.A.I.S.Y. age" (Da Inner Sound, Y'all). Although the members disliked the hippie tag, the humor and variety clearly offered an alternative to the hardcore rap then prevalent in hip-hop. De La Soul quickly came to be viewed as leaders of a New York-based alternative rap circle that also included A Tribe Called Quest, Queen Latifah, the Jungle Brothers, and Monie Love; these artists collectively called themselves the Native Tongues posse.
For a stretch it appeared De La Soul and the Native Tongues collective might surpass hardcore hip-hop in popularity. "Me, Myself and I" reached the U.S. Top 40 pop chart (number one R&B) while the album climbed to number 24 (number one R&B) and earned gold status. At year-end, 3 Feet High and Rising led numerous best-of lists, among them the Village Voice's. Acclaim also brought unwanted notice, notably a lawsuit from the Turtles. De La Soul had sampled the Turtles' "You Showed Me" and combined it with a French lesson on the track "Transmitting Live from Mars" from 3 Feet High without clearance from the 1960s pop act. The Turtles prevailed, a ruling that affected both De La Soul and rap broadly. Thereafter every sample required legal clearance before release, which encouraged greater use of live instrumentation and forced delays for multiple projects already in progress, including De La Soul's second album, De La Soul Is Dead.
When De La Soul Is Dead finally appeared in spring 1991, it drew mixed critical response and its darker, more reflective mood drew a smaller audience than the brighter predecessor. The album reached number 26 on the U.S. pop chart and number 24 R&B, yielding only the modest hit "Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)" at number 22 R&B. The group devoted considerable effort to a third album, released in late 1993. Titled Buhloone Mindstate, it proved harder and funkier than earlier work yet avoided gangsta rap territory. Despite positive reviews the set soon dropped from charts after peaking at number 40, with only "Breakadawn" entering the R&B Top 40. The same outcome met the fourth album, Stakes Is High. Issued in summer 1996, it earned favorable notices but failed to attract broad listenership and quickly vanished from charts.
Four years later De La Soul began what was intended as a three-album series with Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump; despite mixed reviews it sold well and debuted in the Top Ten. The next entry, AOI: Bionix, included a video success with "Baby Phat," yet Tommy Boy and the trio soon ended their partnership. De La Soul then placed their AOI label with Sanctuary Urban, headed by Beyoncé's father Mathew Knowles, and delivered The Grind Date in October 2004. Two years afterward the group put out Impossible Mission: TV Series, Pt. 1, a set of new and previously unreleased material.
The band subsequently entered hiatus, aside from the side project De La Soul's Plug 1 & Plug 2 Presents...First Serve issued in 2012. The following year they offered a free download of early albums packaged as You're Welcome, though Warner Bros., their former label, quickly halted distribution through legal action. A crowd-funding drive for a new album began in 2015 and, once funded, resulted in the self-released And the Anonymous Nobody in August 2016. The largely sample-free record used the group's live band and guest musicians on real instruments and featured contributions from Usher, David Byrne, 2 Chainz, and Damon Albarn among others. Occasional non-album tracks followed, including the 2019 DJ Shadow collaboration "Rocket Fuel" and the same year's "It's Like That" with R&B vocalist Carl Thomas. In 2020 De La Soul released the standalone "Remove 45," a track condemning the Donald Trump presidency as racist and hateful.
In June 2021 Reservoir acquired the Tommy Boy catalog, concluding years of legal obstacles that had restricted access to older recordings. With those matters resolved, De La Soul placed their full back catalog on streaming platforms March 3, 2023, exactly 34 years after the debut album appeared. Although some later albums had already streamed, the first six had not until this release. The occasion was tempered by the death of David Jude Jolicoeur, known as Trugoy the Dove, on February 12, 2023 at age 54 after prolonged health issues. In March 2024 the group marked the 35th anniversary of 3 Feet High and Rising with a deluxe reissue containing previously unreleased demos and additional material.
