De la soul the grind date rar5/26/2023 When the duo rap that they “grew up in a blue-collar life/With white-collar dreams”, and advise “If you need five cents/Don’t ask for three/You ask for 10” there’s no lack of ambition, it’s just that unlike some, they wouldn’t die tryin’ just to get rich. De La Soul are band that have never had a problem with that tricky style/content axis. A ‘street philosophy’ that doesn’t pander to the gangsta fantasies of nice suburban boys ‘n’ girls, informs the deepest rhymes on The Grind Date. Perhaps the key to the band’s success is that, unlike Jenny, De La Soul are still believably from the block. Without resorting to self-parody, De La Soul are still the intellectual whoopee-cushion under the self-aggrandising phat ass of hip-hop. Maybe Pos is right about what “all them books/That say/Native Tongues make songs/with no hooks” (Come On Down), but The Grind Date is as fresh for ’04 as it would have been for ’88. Though Pos, Dave, and Maseo have spun enough rhymes in the 15 years since, few mainstream chart compilers have their workload stretched by the trio’s output over the last ten years. It’s almost protocol to begin any appraisal of De La Soul by referring back to the commercial heyday of when him, themselves and they first struck hip-hop platinum back in the halcyon days of 1989.
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