No Skips: De La Soul will never die 

Hi everyone! Welcome to No Skips, where we see if an album has any skippable tracks from start to finish. The discography of hip-hop group De La Soul has had a renaissance in the 2020s, ever since they were finally able to put their albums on streaming services and claim ownership over their brand from record labels Warner Music Group and Tommy Boy. 

Many fans will stand by their debut, “3 Feet High and Rising,” as their best work, though their follow-up, “De La Soul is Dead,” provides stiff competition. Both are produced by the legendary Prince Paul — also known for his work with Gravediggaz and Handsome Boy Modeling School — giving both records distinct and sample-heavy sounds. 

I’ll argue how their sophomore effort, while bloated with skits and interludes, is better than “3 Feet High and Rising,” starting a prolific run of albums in the 1990s.  

“Oodles of O’s” begins the record with an impressive technical showing by Trugoy the Dove and Posdnuos, two of the group’s three members. Prince Paul utilizes a descending piano line and drum break from James Brown to start this record on a less funky note than their previous record, yet the following tracks show there’s nothing wrong with that. 

“Talkin’ Bout Hey Love” is a rapless interlude with an incredible Stevie Wonder flip. “Pease Porridge” mixes verses with skits, but the clacky beat, which has been rehashed by Prince Paul in a song featuring MF DOOM, makes it worth the while. Many of the rappers’ first words in a line are repeated two or three times, possibly to mimic record scratching, yet it doesn’t get old. 

“A Roller Skating Jam Named ‘Saturdays’” starts like a dream sequence, and when paired with the killer chorus from Vinia Mojica, the futuristic “Sonic R” soundtrack comes to mind. Q-Tip’s verse is also a highlight, ditching conventional grammar to give context to the song’s story, “Girl meets boy on Thursday night / Boy was high, girl fly like kite.” 

“Bitties in the BK Lounge” is another conceptual cut, telling a romance and sex-fueled story like the previous track. The beat hasn’t aged the best and neither has the line “Could be pissed ‘cause she’s clocking $2.45 an hour.” However, Posdnuos and rapper LeShaun change it up midway through by portraying a Burger King cashier and customer, respectively. The second beat switch is overkill, but this song is a far better advertisement for the company than the monotone guy “singing” the slogan. 

“My Brother’s a Basehead” revolves around condemning drug use instead of promoting it like many rappers do these days. De La still tackles this issue with nuance, specifically when Posdnuos creates a narrative where his brother gets hooked on crack and their mother’s idea of healing him is to attend church, which doesn’t work and leaves the brother on the streets. 

“Let, Let Me In” sees Prince Paul’s sampling skills peak with the best use I’ve heard of “Tramp” by Lowell Fulson. To shout out the final member of the trio, Maseo, the final four lines of his verse all start with “Boom!” predating the Costco Guys by over three decades. Is Maseo the Rizzler Enthusiast, or is this a red herring? Read our “Scampus” issue on April 1 to find out their identity. 

“Afro Connections at a Hi 5 (In the Eyes of the Hoodlum)” has some of the most pronounced bass on any song from the “Golden Age of Hip Hop,” referenced in the line “But the fly tape let the car speakers shake.” The song’s emphasis on Black identity and the title may have inspired Digable Planets’ future albums, especially 1994’s “Blowout Comb.” 

“Rap De Rap Show” is another song just musical enough to mention. De La Soul and many other guests make a mock radio show called WRMS headed by “The Doo Doo Man” to give the record some flavor.  

Not much new commentary can be provided on the immaculate “Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa,” one of the album’s three singles that is among the group’s best songs.  

“Who Do U Worship?” is an undeniable predecessor to “Rock N’ Roll (Could Never Hip Hop Like This)” off Handsome Boy Modeling School’s debut album, with its intense record scratching and screaming.  

“Kicked Out the House” is the best interlude-esque track with vocal sampling techniques akin to Public Enemy and frantic shouts of “Put it on vibrate!” “Pass the Plugs” contains verses from each member and Prince Paul, who creates sample-ception by sampling “Potholes in my Lawn” from “3 Feet High and Rising.”  

Although it takes a minute to get going, “Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)” is groovy as hell, albeit with lackluster mixing. “Shwingalokate” somehow one-ups the grooviness, and the mixing is the same, yet the chorus hits harder because of it. The kick hits on the “three” in “On and on and three steps ahead,” keeping the momentum going. Callbacks to other tracks are embellished here including “Feed me the donut, feed me the O.” 

The slower “Fanatic of the B Word” features more repetition of the same words in lines as “Pease Porridge,” though this time it’s a bit more grading. Nevertheless, the beat and chanted chorus make up for this shortcoming, with the “B word” being “baseball” and not “bitch” like one would expect. 

“Baseball” itself means something else, as shown in the final track, “Keepin’ the Faith.” Posdnuos begins his verse with “I’ll never do the baseball with you again,” followed by “Was it such a sin to let, let me in?” This track especially is an exercise in how interesting music and lyrics can be when the foundation is previously existing songs that Prince Paul samples, while dozens of lyrics are interpolations of other lyrics. To that, I’d say the boys prevailed here. 

Reluctance to sample in hip-hop partially stemmed from a lawsuit by ‘60s band The Turtles against De La Soul for an unauthorized sample in “3 Feet High and Rising,” and I’m unsure how The Turtles argued that De La’s music wasn’t transformative of their work. It’s the same shitty argument that allows big companies to file unjustified copyright strikes on YouTube because this trio and Prince Paul created something truly unique here.  

It’s a relief that De La Soul won the war with their catalogue, despite their records hitting streaming services right after the death of Trugoy the Dove in 2023. Their music is anything but derivative of what anyone was making at the time — and ever since. What a paradox that they referred to themselves as dead back during their height, considering their music from the ‘80s and ‘90s is livelier than ever.