Delia Derbyshire
 
I normally don’t care about papercraft objects, I guess because I wouldn’t know exactly how to use or display them. They seem so fragile to me. That was until I saw this adorable Delia Derbyshire paper diorama card featured via a friend’s Facebook page. It would make a perfect gift for someone who’s a fan of Derbyshire. It looks sturdy, too!

Well, It piqued my interest and I discovered they’re made by Etsy shop HeyKidsRocknRoll. Not only is there one of Delia Derbyshire but pop-up cards of Roxy Music, Grandmaster Flash, De La Soul, Stevie Wonder, Run-D.M.C., Raymond Scott and Hank Williams, too.

Sadly, it looks like someone has already purchased the one of Derbyshire. But I’m sure if you contact the Etsy shop directly and inquire, more could possibly be made.

At least I hope so! I want one!

Roxy Music
 

Stevie Wonder
 

Grandmaster Flash
 
More after the jump…

Don’t let the flowers and peace symbols fool you, De La Soul are not hippies.
 
It has been 27 years since hip-hop pioneers De La Soul released their groundbreaking album, 3 Feet High and Rising on Tommy Boy Records. I recently pulled my copy of the record out for a spin at the request of my twelve-year-old son, no less, who had just heard “Me Myself and I” on the radio in the car and wanted to know who was responsible for the infectious track. I don’t often brag about my parenting skills, but when I do, musicology is involved.
 

De La Soul on Dutch TV show, Fa. Onrust, 1989.
 
So let’s go back to the magical number year of 1989 and De La Soul’s trip to the Netherlands. The trio appeared on Dutch television show Fa. Onrust and performed three songs from 3 Feet High and Rising, “The Magic Number,” “Plug Tunin’” and “Me, Myself, And I.” To say that De La’s performance is anything less than completely stellar, would be a vast understatement as it could easily be considered a historic piece of hip-hop flavored performance art that beautifully expressed the band’s culturally rich message. A message that still strongly resonates today.

More after the jump…

 
The Yo! MTV Raps edition of MTV Unplugged dropped in May of 1991, featuring the considerable talents of De La Soul, MC Lyte, A Tribe Called Quest, and LL Cool J for a glorious half-hour of bootylicious rhymes. It was a very interesting moment for a show of this type to run. A lot was happening in the world of hip-hop right around then, including increased respectability among mainstream critics—but ironically, in the years to come the very rappers who had earned that reputation were about to become marginalized. Just a year or so earlier, one of the biggest rap-related news stories was the obscenity trial of 2 Live Crew, who while wonderful in their way may not have been the most ideal poster children for the budding artform. One would have been forgiven for ridiculing the notion of an “unplugged” rap show in 1991; the music was strongly associated with sampling and scratching (not to mention cursing), and its R&B roots, which had been there all along, had been somewhat obscured.

The rap world was in a massively sampladelic phase at that point, what with recent masterpieces like Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique, and De La Soul’s Three Feet High and Rising. However, practitioners must have been aware on some level that the days of rampant sampling were about to come to an end. Sure enough, six months after this episode of MTV Unplugged debuted, a judge named Kevin Thomas Duffy began his ruling in a court case in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York called Grand Upright Music, Ltd v. Warner Bros. Records Inc. with the biblical commandment “Thou shalt not steal.” Duffy held that Biz Markie had infringed on Gilbert O’Sullivan’s copyright when he used O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again (Naturally)” for his own song “Alone Again,” which appeared on his third album I Need a Haircut. The hip-hop world was about to learn how to do without sampling as a primary component of the music. (For an insightful reaction to this case from the time, check out Robert Christgau’s article “Adventures in Information Capitalism: Gilbert O’Sullivan Meets Biz Markie” from 1992.) The performers here may not have known it, but an exhibition of the musicality of rap was about to become a key part of the defense of the artform.
 

 
When this was taped, Arrested Development was right around the corner, but their time in the spotlight wouldn’t last. The music here sounds a bit like the Roots, no? Black Thought and Questlove had formed the band already, in 1987, but were still two years away from releasing their first LP, Organix. The lineup of A Tribe Called Quest, MC Lyte, LL Cool J, and De La Soul was highly NYC-centric, and another influence that was in the process of defining hip-hop in the 1990s was gangsta rap, led by the musicians associated with N.W.A., out of Los Angeles, who released their first album, Straight Outta Compton, in 1988. (The East Coast/West Coast battles between rap factions would soon become an unfortunate staple of the hip-hop scene.) Putting it mildly, the gangsta revolution in rap would serve as one solution to the sampling ruling, while also marginalizing acts like De La Soul and Tribe for the time being.

The centerpiece of the show here is clearly LL Cool J’s galvanizing rendition of “Mama Said Knock You Out,” which he performed shirtless. The rampant booty-shaking that is evident during that cut should serve as the rebuttal to anyone who ever thought that an unplugged rap show was a silly idea.
 

Setlist:
A Tribe Called Quest, “Can I Kick It”
MC Lyte, “Cappucino”
LL Cool J, “Jingling Baby”
LL Cool J, “Mama Said Knock You Out”
De La Soul, “Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)”

 
Thank you Joe Yachanin!

 
When De La Soul’s monumentally groundbreaking album 3 Feet High and Rising came out in March of 1989—a few months ahead of The Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique, it should be noted—it was a significant moment, a high-water mark, if you will, of the era when the lessons of “The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on The Wheels of Steel,” “Rapper’s Delight” and Run DMC had been taken on-board and refined by a younger generation of musicians.

The “sample” wasn’t exactly a new thing by the late 1980s (Faust sampled The Beatles in 1970, and there must be dozens of historical examples prior to that) but knitting together entire songs from parts of other songs was still a relatively “new” thing to do at the time. The way forward pointed out by these earlier pioneers of the form, could be perfected and expanded upon. The gear was there—and was coming down in price—there was a will and there was a way.

The groups who were heavily sample-based could simply wow you with the depth of their musical knowledge, their crate digging prowess and the sheer wittiness of their samples. A Tribe Called Quest, Deee-Lite, the Dust Brothers/Beasties, Public Enemy/The Bomb Squad, and De La Soul/Prince Paul were all doing something so startling and creative in the context of the late 80s/early 90s, that many people—myself included—who were disappointed with the sorry state of music after the post-punk era had tailed-off started to pay attention.

Yes, there was a brief moment there before the lawyers got their teeth stuck in and ruined everything…

Nevertheless, a small handful of classic albums that mostly consist of samples did get made—and released—despite the best efforts of the music industry’s own legal eagles to strangle them in their crib. 3 Feet High and Rising is one of these records and considering that the samples come from Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Jefferson Starship, Kraftwerk, The Turtles, Parliament, Otis Redding, James Brown, Barry White, Sly and the Family Stone, Johnny Cash, Steely Dan, The Bar-Kays, The Monkees, Cymande, even Liberace and Richard Pryor, it is something—like Paul’s Boutique—where it’s just a miracle that it even exists.

3 Feet High and Rising is one for the ages. The Village Voice dubbed it “The Sgt. Pepper of hip hop” and the good people of the Library of Congress evidently feel the same way as they inducted it into the National Recording Registry of culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant American creations in 2010. It’s an album that’s been included on practically every “of all time” list known to man.

Enjoy the sounds of the D.A.I.S.Y. Age (“da inner sound, y’all”)...
 

“Me, Myself and I”
 

“The Magic Number”
 
More magic numbers from De La Soul after the jump…

 
It’s been a long time since I’ve heard this one. I stumbled upon it quite by accident while meandering through the musical maze of YouTube.

“Fallin’” is a perfect collaboration between three groups separated by multiple miles of geographic space but inhabiting the same lysergically-tinged musical universe.

Tom Petty provides the sample and Teenage Fanclub provide the jangly guitar and background vocals as De La Soul spin 70s pop culture references into the weave of this ditty from the sound track of 1993 action film Judgment Night.

...remember when I used to be dope, (yeah!)
I owned a pocket full of fame
(But look what you’re doing now), Well I know, I know
I lost touch with reality, now my personality
Is an unwanted commodity (believe it)
Can’t believe I used to be Mr Steve Austin on the mic
(Six million ways) I used to run it
I guess Oscar Goldman got mad
Cause I got loose circuits (so loose, so loose)
I be the mother goose with the eggs that seemed to be
Fallin’...

Melvin Bliss, singer of one the most sampled songs of all time, 1973’s “Synthetic Substitution,” has died. The list of artists who’ve borrowed from the track is long and overwhelming: Ultramagnetic MC’s, Public Enemy, De La Soul, Naughty By Nature, Gang Starr, Wu-Tang Clan; it goes on, pretty much forever.

Zach Baron of the Village Voice has put together a sweet video tribute to Melvin. Check it out at Village Voice