Growing up with De La Soul
Legendary hip-hop artists show maturity and respect, not juvenile thuggery
PREVIEW
DE LA SOUL
Wednesday, March 27
MacEwan Hall (U of C)
Can I tell you about the strangest hip-hop album ever released? It was bound to happen, yet it still comes as a surprise. Nobody gets shot and nobody brags about shit they never did. Thug life receives the thorough mocking it so richly deserves. The tracks celebrate plus-sized women, marriage, monogamy and being a grownup.
It's called Bionix and while it's not for everyone, it is by De La Soul, and that means that you're missing out on something if you don't listen.
"I guess what we've done does sound older and more mature," says De La Soul's Dave Jolicoeur. "I think we're one of the few artists from the late ’80s who are still making songs that are prominent or relevant. So I think the perspective, the angle we're going to come from, is obviously going to be more mature. There's not as much hanging out and clubbing and partying and everything else.
"This is guys in their early 30s who are just talking about what's around them, what's important to them. I think we have some songs and we've done songs to reintroduce ourselves to a younger audience, but I think that'll be fewer numbers, especially with what we're talking about."
Or not talking about, as the case may be. Jolicoeur is clearly heard committing rap sacrilege on the album's title track, when he admits "And I don't ball too much, ya dig/ I got a ball and chain at my crib who want my ass home," but if he's at all worried about what it will do to his image with the kids, he disguises it well.
"I wouldn't want to go out and make a song that I would have to perform to people I don't understand. Not to say I'm not trying to understand, but it's hard to understand where kids around the ages of 16 to 21 are at. I'm not sure of the era."
In a nutshell, Jolicoeur says, De La Soul are not about to abandon their fans for the sake of scoring with the kids.
"It wasn't about new audiences, we were most concerned about our fans. We didn't want to feel like we were losing an audience that had supported us from day one. Those people grow, and we wanted to know that they was gonna feel the De La, the mature, grown up De La.
He says that every artist wants to be true to who they are, but that it's extremely important to De La Soul. While a lot of groups enter the music business to start a career, they'll find that they compromise too much over the course of that career.
"It's because they're doing it just to put food on the table, " says Jolicoeur.
And while hip-hop may put food on his table, too, he says De La Soul have always followed their own musical path, and you can't teach old dogs new tricks.
"The only thing you can give to what you do is yourself," he says. "So you're better off saying what you have to say. If I was 16 in this game, I'd probably be talking about playing X-Box and trying to get a car or jewelry, but since I'll be 34 in September, I talk about wanting to have a family and be with the woman I love and plan the next five years and so forth." |
