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De La Soul (new album) A few months back, I got into a minor Facebook tiff with an editor at MTV.com simply because I criticized an article she’d assigned to writer David Turner that clowned De La Soul’s brilliant debut 3 Feet High and Rising. Having no history acknowledgement or sense of how 3 Feet High and Rising singularly helped paved the way for Black nerds like him to not get punched on the daily, Turner ranted about the “obvious samples,” declared that “De La Soul is no Major Lazer” and gave us a play-by-play of his bagel consumption and yoga moves. Born in ’92, Turner admits that he can’t really cope with much music that wasn’t made in his short lifetime, but then one must ask, why did he bother? Some have speculated that his attack on the Long Island-based b-boys was satire, but personally, I think the boy was serious as a heart attack. Of course, folks have a right to express whatever opinion they want, but it was Turner’s self-indulgent, condescending tone that made me start waving my cane while demanding that he get off of my lawn. As music critic Ron Hart wrote in his NY Observer piece “Buffoon Mind State,” for which he also interviewed the De La men (who were more amused than angered by junior’s asshattery), “The stuff this guy was blathering on about in between complaints about a bagel—the collagist aspect of the sampling, the flows, the skits—is not just a knock on Posdnuos, Trugoy and Maseo, but the entire Golden Age of hip-hop in general.” Hitting the nail exactly, Hart summed up my feelings of Turner’s article in that one sentence.
As a card-carrying member of that 1989 “golden age,” I can still remember seeing De La Soul perform at Hotel Amazon and The World; I can still remember interviewing Stetasonic member Daddy-O, whose production partner Prince Paul was the sonic scientist behind De La, told me, “You’re going to love this group.” I can still remember walking to the record shop after work to buy the album that I played continuously for days — I even taped it so I could roll with my Walkman — and I remember the thrill of reading “Yabba Dabba Doo-Wop,” Village Voice music critic Greg Tate’s review of the record.
[Edited 8/25/16 9:51am] |
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Don't know why they give people like that a platform. :eyeroll: Being born in 1992 does not excuse a lack of research on part of the writer to understand how rap was different before De La Soul, ESPECIALLY the Fashion (which seems to be the driving force in today's youth culture). Hell, listening to "Take It Off" should have been a major clue for that. |
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Okay, I just read it. I can't believe he is complaining about that? He says he loves A Tribe Called Quest which was also sample-based. |
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I wasn't sure either, since he brought up The Ramones and Mary J Blige's "Real Love", but that's not enough to prove to me he knows enough to write satire. |
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It does sound like a lack of self-awareness as well as hip hop. |
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Good night, sweet Prince | 7 June 1958 - 21 April 2016
Props will be withheld until the showing and proving has commenced. -- Aaron McGruder | |
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Little Dragon are on to something and the track they did with De La Soul is so sexy. I love how the fellas come in at the end. if it was just a dream, call me a dreamer 2 |
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You can take a black guy to Nashville from right out of the cotton fields with bib overalls, and they will call him R&B. You can take a white guy in a pin-stripe suit who’s never seen a cotton field, and they will call him country. ~ O. B. McClinton | |
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