De La Soul – De La Soul Is Dead

Got a beat up original pressing and even with surface noice and the odd skip it Sounds so much more dynamic than the latest reissue. As for the badly scanned cover, come on, what a joke, my phone would do a better job!

The CD version of "De La Soul Is Dead" is basically De La Soul's own The White Album (technically, The Beatles album wasn't called that, it was called "The Beatles" but whatever.) It's huge, sprawling, breathtakingly creative, diverse, and could probably use some generous pruning to give it a more focused scope. Like The Beatles' album, it has its share of perfect, well-crafted classic songs ("Oodles Of O's", "Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)"), that showcase the group's strengths...as well as more than a handful of loose, loopy, possibly pot-inspired sketchy randomness ("Not Over Til The Fat Lady Plays The Demo" is definitely the "Wild Honey Pie" of DLSID.) Also like the fab four, the fab three are all over the map on DLSID, firing shots in every direction, even dipping into mocking hardcore "Afro Connections At A Hi 5 (In The Eyes Of The Hoodlum)" and hip-house "Kicked Out The House", as well as diving enthusiastically into nostalgic, sunshiney disco with "A Rollerskating Jam Named 'Saturdays'". Also like The White Album, there are distinctly darker edges here: DLSID was a reaction to the dayglow neo-psychedelia of "3 Ft High And Rising" and a nearly-universal labeling of the group as "hippies", which is not how Pos, Dave and Maseo saw themselves. Like The Beatles, they were coming out of their brightly-colored, vividly psychedelic public identity and reacting to it by narrowing the spectrum of expression. On DLSID, songs like "Millie Pulled A Pistol On Santa" and "My Brother's A Basehead" are thematically difficult, and many of the samples used on this album are far more emotionally complex than those on the group's debut. Even the album art, depicting a knocked-over pot of daisies atop stark black and white art is similar to The Beatles' minimalist white album art. George Martin, Beatles producer, was quoted a few times over the years saying he'd have made The White Album into a single, rather than double, album, cutting away the material he judged to be weakest. At nearly 80 minutes, DLSID is similarly heavy with content, some of which isn't exactly necessary, like "Johnny's Dead AKA Vincent Mason (Live From The BK Lounge)", "Not Over Til The Fat Lady Plays The Demo" the five(!) skits, the three WRMS radio station interludes. However, I love the scattershot approach of both albums and I don't think being concise and focused is necessarily the goal of great art. I originally owned DLSID on cassette and it was missing four songs that are on the CD version, "Kicked Out The House", "My Brother's A Basehead", "Who Do U Worship", and "Johnny's Dead AKA Vincent Mason (Live From The BK Lounge)", and the flow of the tracklist was fine. After getting the CD version, I got used to those additional four tracks and appreciate their inclusion.