For years now, a critical component of hip-hop history has been missing from the streaming music landscape: De La Soul. Finally, though, the trio’s music hit Spotify, Apple Music, and the rest last month. Tragically, however, this all finally came together shortly after the death of member Trugoy The Dove. To celebrate their streaming debut, though, surviving members Posdnuos and Maseo visited The Tonight Show yesterday (March 16) to talk about it.
A couple minutes into the conversation, Jimmy Fallon spoke about how the trio’s debut album, 1989’s 3 Feet High And Rising, has changed the lives of so many music fans and asked Questlove to share how the album changed him. Quest explained, “For the first time, we just saw, like, ourselves. This is how the group bonded, Tariq [Black Thought] and I. We saw three friends just having fun with each other, practical jokes and all that stuff, and we had never seen that in hip-hop before.”
Elsewhere during the conversation, Fallon started by acknowledging Trugoy’s death and how hard the current De La Soul revival must be in light of that. Posdnuos noted that it’s been “bittersweet.”
Later in the episode, the pair teamed up with The Roots for a performance of “Stakes Is High.”
Watch the interview above and the performance below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ6JXCaOttw
