A LOT OF DEATH TAKING PLACE, A CHANGING OF THE GUARD

Life is on borrowed time and every day another individual passes to show it. De La Soul came from an era where everybody wanted to be different from each other, organically. There was De La Soul, Eric B & Rakim, Public Enemy, Run DMC, etc. While many may look at them as old school, they gave way to MTV video airplay and paved the way for newer rappers of today. De La Soul was a Haitian rap group from Long Island and had a different rhyme pattern with dope beats provided by music producer Prince Paul. I'm sure this sounds like someone from the Temptations passing to someone born in the 2000s but hey Trugoy was one of the standout rappers in the group. Trugoy's rap name backward was actually Yogurt...lol and as different as they were, they were actually the same as everybody when spotted in Long Island and wore hoodies, New Balance sneakers, or Timberlands whenever you saw them. After being affiliated with too many "daisies" (lol) they realized it got out of hand and didn't want to be seen as hippies anymore, so the second album had harder beats a la "Pass the Peas" and still remained fun to listen to due to their wordplay. When I spoke to my boy Johnny Butta about Trugoy passing, he said "Yooo!!! Yeah, I knew something was up when it was only one of them at the Grammys performing!" and he was right. Trugoy had heart failure over the past years and is from Amityville where he grew up with the rest of the group. De La Soul was part of the hip-hop collective known as the Native Tongue. De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Queen Latifah, Monie Love, Black Sheep, and the Jungle Brothers. Phife was a member of A Tribe Called Quest, who also passed away several years ago, hopefully, they're giving each other a high-five right now. The bad part about all of this is De La Soul literally just won the rights to stream De La Soul's albums in March. Boy oh boy, this sucks, but death is a part of life.

 

ORIGINAL PRODUCER LINKED WITH DE LA SOUL TO RECORD NEW ALBUM

Prince Paul is a ummm....a different kind of producer. He samples known to sample children's records, the Turtles, the Beatles, Darryl Hall, and John Oats, and any and everything else he can get his hands on. While this is all creative, fun, and dandy, the clearance rights behind sampling these records have been troublesome to record labels. If you sample more than 4 seconds of a record, the bottom line is the original artists are going to want money, sue you, or all of your publishing. Remember the hit record "Uptown Baby" by Lord Tarik & Peter Guns? The duo said they made only show money from that record because that loop is a straight 8-bar loop from the rock group Steely Dan. These troubles happened to Biz Mark, De La Soul, and Lord Tarik and Peter Gunz and changed the face of hip-hop music forever. Record Labels now want minimal samples from artists, if any and that is where the clashing of creatives comes about because producers like DJ Premier, Just Blaze, and even Dr. Dre based most of their music production on sampling. It gets really deep, but nevertheless, Trugoy was still alive to create new music as of late with his original producer Prince Paul.

Paul produced their very first three hit albums, including their 1989 debut 3 Feet High and Rising, 1991’s De La Soul Is Dead, and 1993’s Buhloone Mindstate. The De LA squad will even be seen on the Cartoon Network series Teen Titans Go!  in the future and Trugoy said “We’re thrilled” said Trugoy about their music catalog purchase in a statement last year. “We have come to a deal between ourselves and Reservoir to release our music in 2021 — our catalog will be released this year, we are working diligently with the good folks at Reservoir, and we sat down with them and got it done pretty quickly actually. Our music will be released in 2021 on all streaming platforms — we’re trying to get the whole catalog out there. It’ll take a minute… a little minute… November.” Rest in Peace to one of the creators. If you are wondering which one he is from the picture, he is the one on the bottom right with the Gumby haircut w dreads.