CityLife

De La Soul's stock is still rising

RITZ CRACKERS: De La Soul

IN hindsight, it seems a little strange that a flower-powered rap trio from the Amityville area of New York’s Long Island should have had their funky fare served up alongside the baggy anthems at the heart of Manchester’s most celebrated musical uprising.

But the Daisy Age vibes of De La Soul’s seminal 3 Feet High And Rising LP somehow chimed with the second summer of love atmosphere soundtracked by homespun favourites in this city’s clubs back in 1989.

There was nothing at all strange in hearing Say No Go juxtaposed with I Am The Resurrection, The Magic Number up against Wrote For Luck.

Twenty years on, De La Soul are on a nostalgia trip back to the city where they were beloved, performing two dates as part of the Manchester International Festival and timing their to-ing and fro-ings so as they can spend fully four days soaking up the atmosphere either side of their shows.

We here in CityLife land often assume – sometimes correctly, often not – that Manchester music has influenced the entire world, so it comes as something of a disappointment to learn that the De La boys had absolutely no knowledge whatsoever of the town where their breakthrough album had been so warmly welcomed all those years ago.

3 Feet sampled pretty much every artist in the world, but not a single Manchester act has had reason to go seeking royalties.

“Do we know much about Manchester? Not at all,” concedes De La rapper and producer Trugoy the Dove, who, to my relief, suggests that I call him by the more prosaic name of… Dave.

“We’ve played Manchester many times but that’s one of the things with travelling with a band.

"You get an opportunity to meet an audience and venture into a city for a day, maybe two at most, but you don’t really get a chance to soak up the history or the culture or music, so this is great.

"I’ve heard of some of Manchester bands, but never really had the opportunity to venture into. So they haven’t really influenced us.”

This trip is billed as 20 Years High and Rising, a celebration of two decades in the business, starting with 3 Feet.

The invitation came by dint of the band’s relationship with a certain Damon Albarn – they collaborated with his Gorillaz project – and it was suggested that De La Soul would be a hot ticket. It is.

Speaking to me on the phone from New York, Dave – full name David Jude Jolicoeur, says that the 3 Feet High And Rising will be the starting point of the night’s celebrations, not the sole focus.

3 Feet

“It’s more than a celebration of 3 Feet, it’s a celebration of our career,” he adds.

“You can’t deny the fact that there are not many of us from our era and from that school (of music) who are still together doing this. Although 3 Feet is something to celebrate, so is our continuing existence in a genre of music which seems to fade and away and destroy itself and spiral down.

“People don’t expect hip-hop to last 21 years and to continue to evolve. It often gets old and stale after a while because it’s such a young kind of music, but we’ve made a great career out of this and we’re proud of that.”

People who make their way to the springy-floored hall that is The Ritz will see Trugoy, Posdnuos and P.A. Pasemaster Mase reunited with their friend and collaborator Prince Paul, a veteran of three De La albums, as well as a 10-piece band.

There will be material drawn from 10 albums and Dave says that each has faithfully captured the De La lives that the performers were living during their creation.

3 Feet was the stepping on point and a period fondly remembered, he adds, even if the outfit didn’t always share other people’s appraisal of their inspiration.

“The word hippy compares to what we were doing only because we were free. It wasn’t a drug, happy-go-lucky, free love type of thing, it was innocence.

No boundaries

"We were just young – music had no gates, no fences, no boundaries and we were just doing whatever we felt was cool. If you wanted to laugh, you wanted to giggle, you wanted to embarrass yourself, that was fine. Leave it on the tape.

"Nothing was planned ever. It was just the innocence of four kids, including Prince Paul, who wanted to make a record.

“But we did take inspiration from the things around us. I heard KRS-1 not as a ‘teacher’, which is how he described himself, but as somebody with so many different styles.

"When we heard Rakim and Eric B, we’d say: ‘He’s sounding really intelligent – he’s saying some things’, which for us, were philosophical in the ‘hood and we thought we needed to make a statement on some records.

"Run DMC were just classic hip-hop. They wore their Adidas and always wore black and had those hats and so fashion came into play.”

De La Soul put their longevity down to the fact that they were musicians first and foremost, also influenced by their parents’ music, acts as diverse as Parliament and Funkadelic, Harry Belafonte and Frank Sinatra, and now able to produce peers including The Beastie Boys and Chaka Khan.

“It’s really about the love of music. We can sit down and do rap records, R n B records, jazz records, we can do whatever we want,” the rapper adds.

For now, he aspires to the career path followed by Damon Albarn, who the band “hang out with” whenever they’re in London.

They want to make films, write book and, of course, make music.

“Our next album will probably feel relaxed and fun, with maybe some commentary about what’s going on in the world. But it won’t feel like: ‘These guys are on a come-back and trying to put a hit record out'.

"We’re just in a cool place, where, like back in the days, we just do music for the love of it.”

De La Soul: 20 Years High and Rising is at The Ritz, Whitworth Street, Manchester, on Friday, July 17. 8pm Tickets: £35 (£15 concessions).