De La Soul - 3 Feet High And Rising

These days to think of rap music is to think of the brilliant and insightful social commentary offered by stuntin' like my daddy and unfortunately for a lot of Australian whitey mcwhites that grew up moistening to tracks like Powder Finger's 'Living Type' and Jeff Buckley's 'Last Goodbye' this is what one assumes rap has more or less been since MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice hung up their hats.
But there was a thing called 'The Native Tongues Posse' that was actually so talented that by comparison combined whole gangs of gangsta rap have not approached equating to one such solid offering of talent as was available at that time.
And the crown jewel is De La Soul, who unlike FNM have some albums that are not as consistently great as other albums, however they are also unlike FNM in that they are still around today, and seem to be subject to the same market forces that have seen the general decline in hip hop on offer, where polish replaces creativity.
The crown of De La Soul has a jewel though and for me it is '3 feet high and rising' I want badly to cheat on this exercise and include it because it has a bonus disk with extra tracks that puts it in front of other De La Albums and similar to King For A Day it is incredibly hard for me to justify a preference myself for one album over another, in the end, it is the album though that I listen to most, that I feel like listening to most and I can't rationalize why.
So with an album that has either 20 or 27 tracks w/ or w/o the bonus disk, I'm not going to go through track by track and stick to the highlights.
First though one thing that does make this album are the filler tracks themselves, and while I say that a lot of distinct personality comes across in the more substantial tracks, DLS expound a lot of their worldview through the filler tracks which are also amusing. Stuff like 'Skip To My Loop' and 'Brainwashed Sketch' and the gameshow snippets all contribute to making this album highly listenable.
Secondly tracks like 'Can U Keep a Secret','Little Bit of Soap' and 'Take it off' are also the rarefied examples of self depreciating humour that mark DLS as relatively secure compared to the hollow posturing that comes with selling shit to dumb people that is rap music today. I mean a song about 'grills' man, fuck.

Highlight 1: The Magic Number
A superb sample of '3 is the magic number' bent out of shape kicks off the album after the somewhat meaningless intro. Here one is exposed for the first time to the 'kinetic flow' that is also a tribute to the combination of Mace, Dove and Pous that makes the speaker + sound system combination that is so effective. One could label them 'the 3 musketeers of hip hop' but that would be increasingly uncool.

Highlight 2: Change in Speak

Okay so I have to confess, if there was anything I learned from A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul it is how much the DJ actually contributes to making or breaking a hip hop tune, I think I learned it at least. Now one can see on this track a simple little loop for a simple little tune that doesn't get overly busy and complements the ditty rap on top of it. I like it.

Highlight 3: Jenifa Taught Me

Freakanomics revealed that the african american community has a penchant for odd spelling of names, like me, and hence I feel like I can readily identify with them and rest assured we shall overcome. Jenifa ends up being a recurring character, but this is a song about sex, and well the losing of virginity that I think is balanced and fair without the paradoxical worship of 'hot babes' that one disrespects as 'bitches & ho's so frequently frequented upon by rap music. I must say that the position of wife-beater is almost preferable to that angsty emo crap, the moral-musical choice imposed on white males in their teenage years betwixt a douche and a turd sandwich. These guys offer a 'third way' if you will where you simply respect yourself and women. Insightful! I'm not sure though if its captured in this song, which is more of an amusing anecdote. But an anecdote told with an extreme play on the english language.

Highlight 4: Ghetto Thang

At times this is almost my favorite track on the album, again it is set at honestly diminishing the plight of the adults grown out of children raised in the ghetto. Socially conscious rap, it has a great section where Trugoy is saying more or less nothing but 'ghetto thang is ghetto something somethin' if you can say something so smoothely my ears can't actually pick up what is being said I appluad you in this context, because its smooth. But if you say something to me that is merely incomprehensible (a la little john) then man I don't like you very much.

Highlight 5: Eye Know

This is a happy song, and any white analysis would only diminish it.

Highlight 6: Tread Water

A song about survival, featuring disneyesque critters to deliver the important message that we all need to tread water, to survive, to look forward to a time when our troubles go away. This is probably my favorite track on the whole album. I love it, and literally while i was travelling and things got tough mentally to cope with the inane repetitive lifestyle of being a full time consumer (I warn you the natural consequence of globalisation is that travel will become like being trapped in Chadstone shopping centre 24/7) I would put this song on and it would make me feel better.
That's right no need for a photo of my crappy family for me, I have De La Soul for that.

Highlight 7: Potholes In My Lawn

This song is 'def' according to Jeff. It is a nice put together set of samples as Puosdnous laments the act of plagarism, the metaphore I assume is that potholes represent stolen daisy's and DA.I.S.Y stands for DA Inner Sound Yall. Here we glimpse the burden of living to this philosophy, but the track is nice and meaty despite its floronic content.

Highlight 8: Say No Go

This would be hands down my favorite if I was able to count the cut on the special disk, which is just a better production. As per its original release though it wasn't hard hitting enough. That said it still contains so many great lines I am still amused by what I hear recently I picked up the line 'drugs are like pleather: you don't want to wear it' which I find neat and my favorite section of all - 'Now people say what have done for all my years, my tears show how hard i've worked, I've heard that shoving is worse than pushing but I'd rather be a shover than pusher coz a pushers a jerk'
Just brilliant. Seriously this is something a real dork would describe as a 'hip hop tour de force'

Highlight 9: Plug Tunin'

When De La Soul's style of speak first appeared apparantly it created a sensation, like if you woke up one day and the sky was orange instead of blue. The world had changed forever but not in a particularly devastating way (I really would enjoy not getting submissions from people doing their thesis on what a change of pigmentation in the atmosphere would mean for climate change). One such symptom of the phenomena was an appearance of a competition to be able to sing the entire way through plug tunin'. And plug tunin is where one does get a sense that this new style of speak is otherworldy. To describe it is to imaging the aliens from 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' breaking into rap. And you maybe have an impression of what this track is like from that. Perhaps though not enough of you are massively uncool enough to know the reference. Fortunately there's youtube:


Highlight 10: Buddy

This is anative tongue's posse love in. It features Q-tip and the Jungle brothers. I have posted the clip before which whilst it captures the love of that group and the laughter flying in the face of the seriousness of the music industry it represents everything right in hip-hop as equally as 'Stunting like my daddy' doesn't and whilst the buddy filmclip freely admits the filmclip makes no sense, stuntin like my daddy with it's inexplicable caption 'one year later' simply doesn't make any sense.
But whilst the album lacks Latifah's appearance that isn't necessarily why the album recording oozes more class. It just flows better. But both are fun. And Buddy really is the cream of socially conscious hip-hop.

Highlight 11: Me Myself and I

If there was one song you'd use to make the case for how cool this band is, and introduce them it is Me Myself and I. I mean just watch the clip for this one, and tell me they ain't cool.


Highlight 12: D.A.I.S.Y Age

not the strongest, but explanatory, and has nice vocal refrains. It is simply one of the many songs where you get the same thing that has kept you listening thus far - originality.

Bonus Highlight: Double Huey Skit

Just when you thought De La Soul maybe have too much talent, Baby Huey plug 3 the DJ/PA starts rapping on the last track. And it's solid, as well as an injection of solid playfullness. Like throwing dried dog turds at girls.

When all is said and done, more is said than done, said Mark Twain whom I have no doubt would have a rap album if he was still alive today and definitely be a big fan of this band.
Now while 3 feet high and rising may appear to outperform King For A Day in sheer volume of highlights, it isn't a straight up comparison. Whilst it seems that Mike Patton is the major drawcard of FNM it is important to remember that whilst one should never downplay the actual brainpower required to coordinate rap talent with djing talent, it's like comparing one of those light flavorsome thai dishes we all love with a hearty beef stroganov, FNM is a weird band for me now to have escalated above Cream as the best rock band of all time, because they have fucking keyboards for fucks sake.
But that said, side by side I could never pick betwixt these two albums, I find them both to be the epitome's of the two sides of the 90's coin. So go out and buy them, buy ten copies to give to all your friends. There is a universe of joy waiting to be discovered.