Live: De La Soul

De La Soul: 25 Years of Hip Hop

The Nottingham heads have been lapping up the sweet hip hop gigs this year, although still waiting with hungry bellies for more. For a De La Soul gig to be on the cards was really something special; old school New York legends who know their shit. Their tour, entitled 25 Years of Hip Hop, celebrated just that, with the trio twisting and turning through their innovative beat styles and lyrics over a quarter of a century.

The support for the night was a big bloke in a Godzilla T-shirt and chunky neck chain called Bill Ray. He was alright. His first few beats were massive, in-your-face bass blasters and then the vibes moved to a more lurking, darker place. His flow was not particularly captivating, and his lyrics were a bit generic and cliché – lots of ‘pussy this, pussy that, I’m the mother fuckin’ best, blah blah blah’ - but he still got the crowd riled up with this all-encompassing, booming voice. His interaction with the masses was great, with him dropping ‘Nottingham’ into the lyrics and seeming genuinely pleased to be performing. It was a short set that couldn’t have been longer than half an hour, but that was probably just about enough of Bill Ray for me. He’s definitely got something for someone, but he’s just not my cup of tea.

I don’t think Bill Ray’s cause was helped by the sound quality in the Rock City main room. The beats were loud, which was great, but it tended to drown the vocal clarity in each performance. It was difficult to decipher a lot of lyrics and there were at least a couple of fleeting instances of screechy distortion that had no place in a De La Soul set. However, it was just at the beginning of the performance that my ears were twitching, and an excited fan-girlishness crept in and took over.

De La Soul burst out and immediately had the crowd screeching. They brought with them an excitable air that floated over the room and seeped into everyone, with bouncing hands and fat grins on faces. After dropping Oooh! And having a huge sing-along, the two emcees had a laugh dividing the crowd into the bullshit side and the party side, setting us up against each other in being the loudest and the most hype. We were stood on the bullshit side, which felt a bit wank, so we moved slightly to our left because we're actually well party.

We got taken back to last century with sweet, late eighties vibes in the form of Potholes in my Lawn and then Trugoy announced that they were gonna be repping Dilla tonight. Beautiful. When Stakes is High was dropped, the room naturally went apeshit, the energy in the room was incredible – hearing such a classic from the horses’ gobs hit everyone square between the eyes. Then they bust out tunes from the recent Smell the Da.I.S.Y mixtape, where the emcees rapped over a load of Dilla beats in commemoration to the legend. Their old school, staggered flow of a creative vocabulary has stuck, yet they’ve managed to rework themselves into the beats cohesively. It felt like slotting on a pair of freshly washed socks you’ve had since you were fourteen - still going strong.

As we all happily nodded our heads, the trio danced about like crazy on stage, Posdnuos donning a towel on top of his head to catch buckets of sweat. Early nineties was slapped onto the table with A Roller Skating Jam Named “Saturdays” and then a rewind back to eighties’ 3 Feet High and Rising ensued, with a bounce-inducing rendition of Me, Myself and I. Everyone went nuts.

The tone was slowed down for Forever, when the crowd swayed lovingly into each other. When the track finished, Trugoy told everyone about when they started out rapping, and how they didn’t know anything about the business – they were just doing it to have fun. They went on to say how appreciative of their fans for staying true for so long, right before they launched a battle of the sexes, getting the blokes to copy a few sound effects and then getting the ladies to do a proper long vinyl-scratching noise which we obviously flopped. No fair.

They bounced off stage but soon returned for an encore to perform Ring Ring Ring. Maseo, De La Soul’s DJ, jumped off the decks and grabbed the mic in a lyric-fuelled frenzy, with everyone singing along “Hey, how ya doin?” Then, they bust out their rendition of Madonna’s Like a Virgin. Yes. Hearing them all sing their verses to Gorillaz’s Feel Good Inc was amazing, one of those tunes you never think you’re going to hear live. Maseo’s almighty cackle at the end of the track was just the cherry on the cake.

Wrapping up the set, Trugoy, being the larger man that he is, joked about how “this shit takes a toll on your body like a mother fucker, but we do it cos we love it.” They ended on Magic Number, a sea of three fingered hands taking over the air like a Girl Guides’ Pow Wow riot, as Posdnuos jumped into the crowd for a final goodbye.

It was difficult not to compare the event to the Jurassic 5 gig we experienced a couple of months ago, seeing as the two performances were both from long-standing, U.S hip hop legends and at the same price. Although the night was awesome and we obviously enjoyed seeing masters of the craft perform, we were somewhat spoilt by Jurassic 5’s interactive, attention-to-detail showcase and a couple of us felt a little underwhelmed. That’s not to say what they did and what they are isn’t amazing, but Jurassic 5 raised the bar to a standard that'll make it difficult to be that impressed again. Bastards.

De La Soul performed at Rock City on Thursday 7 August 2014.

De La Soul website