De La Soul's seminal debut, 3 Feet High and Rising, still blows minds
by Sean L. Maloney
- Chestnuts, Meet Path: De La Soul
"Prince Paul needs a haircut." Say what? "My bananas are at their ripest, but they all stand at 3 feet." Uh-huh. "I can hold two pieces of doo-doo in my hand." Um, yeah.
No matter where you drop the needle on De La Soul's seminal album 3 Feet High and Rising, you're bound to find strangeness—Jews harp here, an ode to hygiene there. And no matter how you feel about hip-hop's influence on the youth of America, there's one thing that can not be disputed—that's some seriously heavy shit to drop on a 9-year-old kid.
It all seemed benign enough when it was just the cassingle of "Me Myself and I," some Legos and summer vacation, but that tape-of-a-tape of De La's 1989 debut album must have wrecked some serious shop up in that developing little dome of mine. It's not like it was the first rap record I was into. (That would be Run DMC's "Peter Piper," and I apologize to every DJ that fielded my constant requests for it between the years 1986 and 1989—but you can all fuck yourselves for not playing it.) And it's not like I didn't have cooler, older cousins feeding me the kind of records that parents and politicians of the day were convinced would lead to the downfall of our great nation—your 2 Live Crews and your Ice-Ts and your whatnots.
3 Feet High also didn't get down like the other records a burgeoning rap-nerd could get past the Parental League of Decency. There was no mom-friendly dance routine, à la Kid 'n Play's 2 Hype, that you could perform at family get-togethers while your racist uncle mumbled about how "his kids would never listen to that rap crap." Girls of the world were still nothin' but trouble (see "Jenifa Taught Me" for details), but if parents just didn't understand the Fresh Prince, then they totally didn't get De La Soul. It was like being let in on the coolest, most secret inside joke ever, even if you didn't really know what to make of the punch line. Or if there was a punch line. Or if it was even a joke to begin with.
After 20 years of studious deconstruction and academic analysis of 3 Feet High and Rising—as a grown man staring down his 30th year on this earth, as music writer and professional nerd—I still can't tell you if I get it. Sure, I can tell you why it's one of the most important records in the history of hip-hop—innovative lyrical constructions matched with irreverant, imgaintive sampling, yadda yadda yadda—but that doesn't begin to explain the mind-bending cosmic energy released by "Potholes in My Lawn." Sure, "Ghetto Thang" and "Take It Off" were cyclopean in the way they predicted De La's sorta downfall at the hands of hyper-commercial cross-branded gangster-ism, but how were we to know that back in the day? And how, beyond all reasonable explanations, are those skits so damned entertaining, even after it's been established that skits on hip-hop records are the most annoying thing ever? (Seriously, if Method Man isn't sewing your asshole shut and just feedin' ya and feedin' ya, leave the skits out. Please.)
3 Feet High and Rising doesn't just go over your head, it goes around it and under it and through it, like radio waves from a phantom planet where wordplay makes kings and samples never need to be cleared. 3 Feet High is like a parallel universe where all forms of popular music exist on the same astral plane and genres are just road markers for cerebral adventurers with no need for a map. Yet for all the metaphysical jibber jabber that this album can inspire, at the end of the day, it's still the home of one of the undisputed, super-heavyweight party jams of all time—"Me, Myself and I." All the postmodern literary theory and deconstructionist philosophy in the world don't mean shit when that Parliament sample drops and those magical words "Mirror mirror on the wall," come over the speakers—your ass is on the dance floor and your hands are in the air.
Which may be the reason, 20 years and several amazing albums later, De La Soul still matter and Kid 'n Play are a punch line in an insurance commercial. It's one thing to make a party anthem and another thing to make a piece of high-concept experimentalism, but on those rare occasions when the two happen at the same time, well, that's something special. It's still some heavy shit to lay on a 9-year-old, though.
Email music@nashvillescene.com.
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I purchased 3 Feet High last March after getting a Best Buy gift card for my birthday. I was a little late in the game to hear this album, but as a prejudiced jackass who discarded all hip hop as a singular loop over which some gritty-voiced urbanite rapped about hos and weed, I guess it was semi-understandable. All that aside, 3 Feet High didn't do much for me the first time around. I really appreciated De La Soul's humor, as I was afraid all rapper took themselves too seriously, but I felt the production was cheesy and had some poor segues from one section of a song into the next. However, I liked it enough to give other hip hop artists a try, and am finding that I do like some rap! Cut to a few weeks ago: I put the album on again, as I felt compelled to hear "Potholes on My Lawn," and I was blown away. The whole album is great! The production suddenly made sense; the samples were ingeniously placed (it's fun to hear many songs incorporated into one, especially when they're songs you already know); Posdnuos has expert timing, finding a nice balance between syncopation and accenting on the beats, making it exciting, yet not unapproachable; most importantly, though, they still have a great sense of humor and I really dig their image, which is totally the opposite of every "cool" rapper.
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