Comeback albums are usually hard to get right, they get the response “well it’s not as good as that classic album” as if the fans expect the artist to be in that same creative mind set they were 20 years ago. In hip-hop, comeback albums aren’t as common, rappers usually continue to make music consistently for years without taking many breaks. De La Soul never did things the same way though, they weren’t hip in any kind of way, but they were inventive. Sure, they were weird, but they made it cool to be weird. With that said, it’s no surprise that this album turned out the way it did. The people who funded this through Kickstarter would not have known what they were expecting at all, and I’m not entirely sure if they will have been happy with what they got.
This album is all over the place, it meanders, there’s almost as much structure here as on a DJ Khaled album, with all the guest features and genre shifts, but at least De La Soul actually do something. The album starts off confusingly with an intro from Jill Scott, which would normally excite me as her vocals are always worth hearing but, instead, she’s talking on the track. She says you should love something when it’s down to its lowest and no one cares about it, as opposed to loving something at its most successful. My response to that is love whatever you want regardless of how successful it is, but hey it’s only a short intro track, it’s skippable.
The album properly starts with the tight ‘Royalty Capes’, which stands out as much of the album is fairly loose. Like the following track, ‘Pain’, this track is smooth (probably one of the smoothest you’ll hear all year), slick and funky, with a great feature from Snoop Dogg, and this is the kind of track he was born to rap over. A few other songs follow this tone, ‘Memory Of’ with Estelle and Pete Rock, a track that makes me wish Estelle stuck around in the mainstream much longer as she did because her vocals are fantastic. Likewise with Usher on the R&B ballad ‘Greyhounds’, a very slow and perhaps even sleepy track for De La Soul’s standards but I think it works really well.
However, like I said earlier, there are some genre shifts here, it’s a little jarring but it isn’t a major problem for the album. The most notable one is ‘Lord Intended’, featuring Justin Hawkins, yep that’s right, The Darkness vocalist. It’s as corny as it could possibly sound, luckily it’s the only track that completely fails. The guitar on the verses sounds really poor and De La Soul just don’t belong on this kind of song. Justin Hawkins comes in later and does his usual thing but it ends up sounding even worse when it becomes a failed rock opera and the instrumentation gets painfully grandiose. It would be like Meat Loaf collaborating with A Tribe Called Quest, no one wants that.
What follows is another surprise feature with David Byrne, and I’ve gotta say this song works well. The chorus in particular is fantastic, David Byrne’s hook with “Will I ever get tired of this Will I ever get turned around” really sticks in the brain. The shift to the verse with Pos perhaps wasn’t the best transition but it’s still a solid and unique track.
I want to address a common criticism that many critics have made, in which that the guest features seem to override De La Soul, and there’s not enough of the rappers on these specific tracks. For the most part I think the features do their thing really well. ‘Drawn’, which is basically Little Dragon for 5 minutes, is a decent track, Little Dragon doing what they do well and have been doing for years, but I understand the criticism for people that have no previous history with Little Dragon.
‘Trainwreck’ however, is featured-less, with a good bell sample used throughout, and a great hook also. Another great feature comes from 2 Chainz, surprisingly, “I love myself so much I’m a groupie”. An eclectic beat coming from Dave, and 2 Chainz sounds fantastic over this beat, it’s quite amazing how a certain beat can bring out the best in a rapper.
Things get heartfelt at the end of this album, first with ‘Here In After’ with Damon Albarn, at the start the song is very uplifting with its refrain “cause we’re still here now” and the instrumentation before Damon’s verse, where the song mellows out. The song tackles death as there are references to losing parents and other people.
And then there’s the closing track, which has the line; “Saviours, heroes? Nah. Just common contributors hopin’ that what we created inspires you to selflessly challenge and contribute.” This is what it’s all about for De La Soul, creating music, hoping to inspire others. Album sales? Popularity? They don’t care about that. They set out to create art, to hopefully give others ideas and new ways to create their own art, and they did exactly that, with albums like 3 Feet High And Rising. It’s a beautiful end to the album, sure the whole thing could have been tighter, but the I do believe it’s an under appreciated album that is worth anyone’s time.
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