Which ’90s sitcom did De La Soul turn down the opportunity to star in?
Posdnuos: “The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air.”
CORRECT.
“We had the same managers as Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince. They thought that any of the three members of De La Soul should try out for the TV show, but we didn’t – we were so in touch with music. These days, artists say, ‘Let me rhyme, sing, tap-dance, pole vault!’ Back then, it was like, wait a minute, you want us to do something other than rhyme?! We can’t do that. We didn’t even take it seriously. We were asked to try out for all the movies that rappers were in – whether it was Who’s The Man?, Juice or Bamboozled – but we were more into the craft of music.”
De La Soul won the 2006 Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for your feature on Gorillaz ‘Feel Good Inc.’ Name any of the four acts you beat.
“Ay-ay-ay! We opened the show with Madonna, but I don’t think she would have been in that category.”
WRONG. You beat: Black Eyed Peas and Jack Johnson (for ‘Gone Going’), Foo Fighters and Norah Jones (‘Virginia Moon’), Herbie Hancock and Christina Aguilera (‘A Song For You’) and Stevie Wonder and India.Arie (‘A Time to Love’).
“I would have never remembered that! [Laughs] Opening the Grammys performing with Gorillaz holograms and Madonna was amazing – she’s a creative force to be reckoned with that we’ve all played students to. Being on the same stage with her in any capacity was overwhelming – in a good way.”
Did you realise when you first heard ‘Feel Good Inc.’ that it was a hit?
“No clue! We had a friend who knew them, who asked: would you want to do something with Gorillaz? We replied, of course! Once we got talking with Damon [Albarn], he sent us a bunch of songs and ‘Feel Good Inc.’ wasn’t even part of those. The song we actually chose was ‘Kids With Guns’*, which we put rhymes to and Mase [De La Soul bandmate] worked with Damon on to add extra production. After we finished ‘Kids With Guns’, Damon was in another room playing Dave [Trugoy, De La Soul member who died in 2023] some other stuff he was working on. Dave ran out and said: ‘You got to hear this one’ – it was the early stages of ‘Feel Good Inc.’. The rest is history.
“Dave immediately wanted to write something to it, but the next day we had to head back to the States because we had two weeks to hand in our album ‘The Grind Date’. Damon said: ‘Pos, Dave is in the zone, let him do what he needs to do on ‘Feel Good Inc.’ Then I’ll send the song to y’all and you’ll have a few weeks before you need to turn it in.’ But once Dave did what he did, that was the magic of it, so he stayed on the track by himself.”
De La Soul collaborated with Gorillaz on numerous tracks. Any plans to work together again?
“We would never force anything, but if Damon needs us, we’re there for it. We’d love to.”
*’Kids With Guns’ ultimately featured Neneh Cherry
In 2004, which De La Soul track became the first ever hip-hop song played on Mars?
“’Potholes In My Lawn’?
CORRECT. By NASA’s Opportunity Rover.
“Phew! The brain is still working! [Laughs] We were kids that were originally considered very different to what was going on. We played along by calling ourselves Martians who were transmitting live from Mars, so to know our music has been played in space is win-win.”
Can you remember any of the questions posed on the gameshow-themed ‘Intro’ skit from De La Soul’s debut album, ‘3 Feet High And Rising’?
“Oh boy! I know this, but my brain is saying, ‘I’m not going to play with you’ [Laughs]. ‘What does ‘Tuhs eht lleh pu’ mean?’ and ‘How many times did the Batmobile catch a flat?, maybe?’”
CORRECT. You could have also had: How many feathers are on a Perdue chicken? How many fibres are intertwined in a Shredded Wheat biscuit?”
You pioneered the rap skit…
“It came about because when we should have been rehearsing and the cassette was on, Dave would suddenly start rhyming in an accent or we’d clown around – and it would be recorded. We’d end up having five-20 minutes of us fooling around before we got down to business. When we let [producer] Prince Paul hear it, he thought it was crazy. He would show us tapes of him and his friends dubbing voices over karate tapes and having fun. Once we started working on ‘3 Feet High And Rising’, we knew we needed those elements on it.”
Which cult 2001 video game do De La Soul appear in?
“I’m scrolling through the Rolodex in my memory… PaRappa The Rapper 2?”
CORRECT. Your tie-in single, ‘Say, I Gotta Believe’, plays on the title screen if left idle.
You’re releasing a 30th anniversary edition of De La Soul’s fourth album ‘Stakes Is High’. What score did NME award it in its original review?
“All I know is they loved the first one so much*, so I’ll be humble and say 6/10?”
CORRECT.
“YEAH! ‘Stakes is High’ is one of my favourite albums. At that point in our careers, we were already considered veterans. We were still fairly young men, but we didn’t know if the world was still down to hear what De La Soul had to say. Our third album ‘Buhloone Mindstate’ hadn’t made the mark that some of our peers like A Tribe Called Quest were making with their albums. We were disillusioned. We were all young fathers. We felt there needed to be more positive messaging in hip-hop culture. That’s what ‘Stakes Is High’ was for us – it was our Marvin Gaye ‘What’s Going On’. Listening to it now, it still holds weight and feels fresh.”
It was partly a critique of the excess of gangsta rap.
“Yeah. A lot of Dave’s lyrics – particularly on the title track – approached the industry. If you look at my rhymes, it was a critique on where life was for me and also the culture of hip-hop. Even if we were addressing gangsta rap or the mafioso personas that was going on, it wasn’t to make fun of NWA or Wu-Tang – the issue was there was 700 other groups with the same philosophy. We came from a point in 1989 where you could have NWA and Geto Boys, but then you’d also have DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince and De La Soul. You could have different characters. When it felt like everyone was only picking from one way of looking at things, we were just questioning that.”
Was it surprising when Tupac mistakenly assumed your ‘Ego Trippin’’ video was making fun of his visuals for ‘I Get Around’?
“It hurt. It definitely surprised us because Pac was, in our mind, a good friend. We got to know him through Digital [Underground]. We had so much fun at different times when we would hang out. Pac saved me from getting beat up when I was in the [San Francisco] Bay Area. After an amazing show, I was in the parking lot about to head back to the hotel, and some kids saw me and wanted to start trouble – and Pac neutralised it. He shut it down. He was like, ‘Yo Pos, be careful.’ Pac was that type of dude. He was loving, so it was sad that happened with the ‘Ego Trippin’’ video.
“In the ‘Ego Trippin’ video, we were supposed to be play all the parts. The guy in the pool with the girls was supposed to be me, but I wasn’t comfortable being shirtless in a tub with a bunch of chicks. [Laughs] They needed to find someone else, and it wound up being someone who was dark-skinned and bald-headed. To me, he looked more like R. Kelly. So it was crazy that Pac felt like that part was making fun of him.
“Because, initially, the video would have shown that De La Soul is visually making fun of ourselves in the same way we did in our album skits. It was a hard pill to swallow because even after that, he dissed us in some tracks that wound up on his ‘The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory’ record.
“One thing I thought was dope was I met his sister a few years later and she said, ‘Pac really loved y’all.’ He was just hurt when he thought we were doing something that could be disrespectful to him, and he lashed out.
“When his manager at the time told us Pac was upset, I got his number and called him. Pac didn’t pick up, but I left him a message saying. ‘Please call me, we love you and would never do anything like that.’ Hopefully he heard the message.”
*‘3 Feet High And Rising’ was NME’s Best Album of 1989.
Which hip-hop duo recorded a 2009 sequel to De La Soul’s 1991 cut ‘Millie Pulled A Pistol On Santa’ titled ‘Millie Fell Off The Fire Escape?
“Darn it, I know this but I can’t see their name! Gah!”
WRONG. Atmosphere.
“ARGGGHHH! I heard it when they first did it. Shucks!”
In 2016, which former footballer (and De La Soul superfan) did you perform ‘Me Myself And I’ with on Sky’s A League Of Their Own?
“Yikes! I don’t know this.”
WRONG. Jamie Redknapp.
“I barely remember that. I need to watch it on YouTube.”
In terms of proper De La Soul collabs, have any stood out as your favourites?
“We always approached collaborations from what we learned from Prince Paul. Ask – all they can do is say no. To have a song with Chaka Khan [‘All Good?’] was insane. We had so much fun with her in the studio. And then David Byrne on ‘Snoopies’ started out as a joke. We were working on something from the ‘And The Anonymous Nobody…’ album and I made a joke: ‘How do we do this? Because this sounds like a Talking Heads record.’ Everyone laughed, but then we thought, ‘Why don’t we see if David Byrne would get on this record?’ We sent him the track, he immediately said yes, and started communicating with me, saying, ‘Yo Pos, I thought about this…’ So I’ve got a track of him humming, saying, ‘This is the melody I heard.’ That David Byrne was showing me his process was mind-blowing!”
You said ‘all they can do is say no’. Who have turned you down?
“Hundreds of thousands of people! [Laughs] We wanted Lenny Kravitz to play electric guitar on ‘Rock Co.Kane Flow’, but he was on tour. We wanted Willie Nelson to be on ‘Unfold’. We wanted Mary J. Blige to do something – she passed. On our latest album [‘Cabin in the Sky’], Tyler, The Creator and Doja Cat both passed. It’s part of the game.”
Speaking to NME last year, you revealed you had unreleased material with MF DOOM and Mac Miller. Will they ever see the light of day?
“I think the Mac Miller one will, if his estate loves it. We never want to put anything out that’s just being used at a certain time to benefit us because, ‘Oh wait a minute, it was DOOM’s birthday, let’s put this DOOM track out’. We love it to come out but it’s about making sure it’s at the right time and everyone involved approves. We always take a fresh approach, so those tracks don’t sound dated.”
Which The Wizard Of Oz character do you play in De La Soul’s ‘Oooh’ video?
“Scarecrow.”
CORRECT.
“I developed claustrophobia from that video, because all of us had moulds made of our faces. You had a bucket around your neck and a straw in your mouth. They pour in all the liquid until it hardens. As it got up to my ears, I freaked out and they had to rip it off. Since then, if I’m in a confined space, my lungs start tightening up. I can’t go through car washes anymore.”
What were De La Soul carrying on the cover of NME in October 1989? (Clue: the headline was ‘Don’t Fear the Rapper’)
“If I’m not mistaken, I had a NWA shirt on and was holding a scythe like the Grim Reaper.”
CORRECT.
“I loved that cover and framed it.”
The verdict: 7/10
“Not bad! It would have been horrible to fail at De La Soul questions!”
De La Soul’s ‘Stakes Is High’ 30th Anniversary Edition is out now and available for purchase here
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