When De La Soul announced that they would be running a Kickstarter for the completion of their next album, I did a double take and said, “Why?” Then I remembered a few things:
- I don’t have any of my early De La tapes, because well, they were tapes.
- The last album I bought, which was one of their dopest The Grind Date gave me RockCo.Kane Flow. One of the illest songs of all time.
- I don’t have any of my early De La because De La got shitted on by the industry and they haven’t been able to make any royalties or residuals from their early stuff due to difficulties between Tommy Boy and Warner Bros transferring their catalogs back and forth since no one wanted to check and see if the samples had been cleared.
- De La Soul remains one of the dopest bands in Hip-Hop and the simple fact that I couldn’t replace my tapes and support them was some hot bullshiggity.
- A few years back De La got bold and gave a middle finger to the industry and released every one of their albums for free on Valentine’s Day since they couldn’t sell it.
Once I thought about these things, the Kickstarter indie route seemed a perfect fit for a group and a small amount for the relationship that I’ve formed with DLS over 25 years. I backed the project and over the course of the album being recorded their were numerous updates and information about how the album was coming together and yesterday, finally backers got their download links for every version. The dope thing about the project is all of the samples were created in studio by a band and then chopped and turned into this presentation for the masses.
Do the right thing and buy this, not because you’re supposed to but because this might be the dopest album of the year and that is as The Lord Intended!
