De La Soul Is Dead


De La Soul Is Dead is the second studio album by American hip-hop group De La Soul, released on May 14, 1991. The album was produced by Prince Paul, whose work on 3 Feet High and Rising was highly praised by music critics. The album was one of the first to receive a five-mic rating in the Hip hop magazine The Source; and the album was also selected as one of The Source's 100 Best Rap Albums in 1998. The album's cover refers to the death of the "D.A.I.S.Y." age, or a distancing from several cultures including hippies and mainstream hip-hop.
The song "Oodles of O's" was featured on the soundtrack of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4.

Overview

The album features a series of separate, ongoing skits. The introduction to the album features Jeff, a teenage character. In a parody of old children's book-and-record read-along sets, Jeff finds a cassette tape copy of a De La Soul album in the garbage. Bullies appear, beat up Jeff, and steal the tape. Ensuing skits feature these bullies harshly criticizing the songs on the album. Mista Lawnge of Black Sheep provides the voice of the lead antagonist, while P.A. Pasemaster Mase voices the other bully who gets ridiculed and abused by Lawnge for his admiration of the album. Throughout the skits, the sound of the signal that lets the reader know that it's time to turn the page is heard. In the end, they throw the tape back in the trash, exclaiming, "De La Soul is dead." The album also introduces a fictional radio station called WRMS that plays nothing but De La Soul music.
The song "Pass the Plugs" features the lyrics "Arsenio dissed us but the crowd kept clapping." This refers to the group performing on The Arsenio Hall Show, where Arsenio Hall introduced them as "the hippies of hip-hop." The group then performed "Me Myself and I," which explicitly states that they are not hippies. The credits for the show also began to run over the performance before the group was finished, contributing to the perceived lack of respect. Despite not wanting to be labeled as hippies, the group also did not want to be labeled hardcore. The album's 13th track, "Afro Connections at a Hi-5," is an ironic attack directed at the emerging gangsta movement of the early 1990s.
In 2008 the album was re-released on vinyl without the CD version's bonus tracks.

Track listing

All tracks written by P. Huston, K. Mercer, D. Jolicoeur, V. Mason; additional writers credited below.