Legendary hip-hop trio De La Soul will receive a biography book released by J-Card Press on July 11th. The book was written by Dave Heaton, who is known for writing bout music for over thirty years, including for PopMatters, The Big Takeover, and his own website Erasing Clouds.
De La Soul has been an indestructible creative force over the past thirty years. From the nonconformist humor of their debut, ‘3 Feet High and Rising,’ to their eventual role as hip-hop elders, the trio is a model of fearless evolution and perseverance. They’ve toured the globe, worked across genres, and helped to establish the Afrocentric collective known as Native Tongues. De La Soul conveys the scope and depth of their legacy, going behind the scenes to look at how they formed, trace the evolution of their sound over three decades, and discuss why the band still matters today.
“De La Soul were one of the most uniquely, defiantly nonconformist groups to emerge in the creative free-for-all of the late eighties, not just in hip-hop but in any genre that valued fearless creativity. Heaton’s in-depth, career-spanning chronicle of their legacy doesn’t just get at what made their music special, but what motivated it—their upbringings, their enthusiasms, their influences, their friends (and rivals)—and in the process, he pinpoints in fine detail every giant step they took in evolving both their art form and their own relationship to a record business that might not have been entirely ready for them. A must-have whether you’re just starting to familiarize yourself with one of rap’s most transformative groups, or are a longtime fan looking for a reminder of just how and why they meant so much,” shared Nate Patrin, author of ‘Bring That Beat Back: How Sampling Built Hip-Hop.’