a.k.a Dave Jolicoeur a.k.a Plug Two. Just 54. Tough one this, as when DLS came along in 1989 I was in probably the happiest period of my life and these even younger guys with their bonkers songs about helping monkeys reach bananas seemed to have the whole world at their feet. Seeing Posdnous perform solo during the Grammys’ hip hop celebration had me wondering how things were in the camp, but I never imagined this.
The song is Must B The Music, from the neglected album First Serve, which Dave made with Pos..
R.I.P. De La Soul’s Trugoy
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Not been here a while but this really moved me.
De La were the first band I ever really loved, aged 11 and responsible for me meeting my best pal. We rapped De La lines on the street corners of our Devon market town. I loved them so much I built a little stand in my woodwork class at school to house the second album when it came out on cassette. I although ended up giving it to my Dad to rest his pipe in after he had a heart problem (!)
They opened my eyes to all sorts of music – more hip hop obviously but also all the tracks they sampled and some psychedelia too.
There was a lot more to them than 3ft. Maybe I played it out too much but it was the second album that stuck with me for the rest of my life.
RIP Trugoy – you made me fall in love with music xxx
Good to see you back here, Chimney.
That “you made me fall in love with music” is spot on.
Thanks for this. It’s very very bad news. As someone who was a proper hip-hop tragic at the time, you can’t overstimate what a breath of fresh air DLS were in 1988-9.
“Breath of fresh air” – exactly that.
Oof. This one hits hard.
Three Feet High & Rising was, by pure fluke, the first album I ever bought.
My parents listened to a lot of music at home, much of it the kind of stuff lionised on the Afterword. I’d had a childhood of the Byrds, Bob Marley and Van Morrison, but this was the first time I’d ever stood alone in a record shop, birthday money in pocket, dazzled and bemused by the options. I hadn’t read the NME yet, my mates weren’t really into music at this stage, and I had no idea how one should even begin to go about finding one’s own Bob Marley or Elvis Costello.
As I scanned the racks of new releases, my eyes eventually settled on the record cover which most obviously stood out from the others. A riot of dayglo colours, cartoon flowers and black and white photos, three things in particular jumped out to my young brain: the band’s name was in Spanish (I didn’t know such a thing was possible, but it created an immediate affinity to my own family), across the aisle I could see a De La Soul T-shirt with a large, neon Green CND sign on it, and the artists appeared to be black. These three elements seemed, to my 10 year old brain, deeply incongruent. I was sold, and went home with both the cassette and the T-shirt, colours nailed firmly to mast.
Obviously, the album is a total classic. I had gone hunting in the dark and felled a woolly mammoth at the first attempt. I had never heard anything like this, a riot of samples, skits, jokes and – uh – pretend orgies. It felt childish and grown up at the same time, which was exactly what I wanted from it at that age – a bold new frontier and comfort food, all at once. Even then, I could recognise snatches of my parents’ music in it (the obvious Otis Redding whistles), and yet it was unlike anything played at home. In fact, to my ears, it was even better.
There was a lot to absorb, but over time I identified my favourites: Take It Off (“Take those acid-washed jeans, bell-bottomed, designed by your mama…Off? Please? Please..” – unbeatable), This Is A Recording For Living In A Fulltime Era, the demented Tread Water, Potholes On My Lawn and – most of all – Buddy. Buddy, which was so clearly about sex, and therefore unknowable at that stage, but which swung so beautifully, which contained the best moment on the whole album (the gorgeously laid back “Straight out the jungle, the jungle, the brothers, the brothers”) and which eventually lead me on to A Tribe Called Quest, and so many other adventures from there.
As I grew older, I continued to follow De La as best I could. Copies of Buhloone Mindstate and De La Soul is Dead were hard to come by in my provincial Our Price, but I laid hands on them nonetheless. At the same time, my journey into Hip Hop grew and grew: I went back in time to BDP, Eric B & Rakim, and early Public Enemy: I was zapped directly into the future by 2Pac, Biggie Smalls and Flipmode Squad. I heard better technical rappers, more memorable bars, but I never again heard anything as sonically arresting as Three Feet, until the first Wu Tang records. And even then my first thought was that the horrorcore production of the RZA was simply the flip side of the coin to the Daisy Age sound.
Later, in amidst the grief fest that was Portishead’s Dummy I would suddenly detect the presence of the same sample of Eric Burdon & War’s Magic Mountain that Prince Paul had dropped into Potholes On My Lawn, and found myself laughing out loud. It was like my old pal the class clown had suddenly and unexpectedly shown up at a funeral.
I got into the music press, and discovered that Three Feet was regarded as a classic album (it wasn’t just me!), and congratulated myself for my impeccable taste, carefully overlooking that my second album purchase was Betty Boo, my third Technotronic. A man of mixed tastes, even in Primary School.
In 1996 De La released Stakes Is High and I fell in love all over again. I adore everything about that record from the cover on down. For me, it’s their most balanced album: their flow was never better, the sampling is less hyperactive and, on the title track, it contains the first Dilla beat I ever heard, and I had most certainly never heard anything like that. Nor had most other people. Stopped me in my tracks. It’s an album that got me through tough times and out the other side. It honestly felt like they’d come back and given me exactly what I needed in that moment, for the second time in my young life.
The great sadness of all this is that the group have been somewhat removed from the mainstream cultural radar for over a decade due to their dispute with Tommy Boy. Old heads know them, of course, but they’ve become a difficult group to “discover”, and that’s a tragedy, because somewhere out there must be another 10 year old who needs to hear them as much as I did back then. Whose mind might be blown and doors might be opened as mine were. As it stands, I went looking for Wonce Again Long Island, the track with which I initially hoped to accompany this post, and I couldn’t even find it on YouTube.
The De La back catalogue is due to hit streaming services for the first time on 3 March. I wish Trugoy could have lived to see that date and a little beyond, because these records are seminal, and they deserve the widest possible audience, so we can all give thanks for what these guys did for us. Because without them, I genuinely don’t know where I’d be, or what I’d be listening to.
Thank you, thank you, thank you – massive respect and Rest in Peace.
In the absence of Wonce Again, it’ll have to be Buddy to play us out. Say what.
Top post! (Interesting that your first purchase found you in a record store wondering what to buy rather than hearing something so amazing you went looking for a record store to buy it – can certainly identify with the peripheral town experience of being there, cash in hand, only to be met with the familiar “we don’t have it” refrain).
Popped back in to say The Magic Number and Eye Know (which, I think, is where we all came in) are already up on Spotify, reassuringly in all their multicoloured splendour, as I discovered when I was throwing together a playlist to shuffle post-Grammys.
Reading the piece in The Guardian persuaded me that I wasn’t hallucinating about hearing rumours new material before Christmas. Didn’t like to bring it up, if without substance..
Magic Number has been on Spotify all along (along with a couple of later albums), but Eye Know only arrived about a fortnight ago. I know this because I immediately subjected my kids to it more than was comfortable for them 😂 Credited to De La Soul and Otis Redding, as a result of a recent settlement with the Redding estate.
I never lost the taste for buying records I hadn’t heard, or even heard of, right up until I stopped buying physical media. Some of my favourite moments in my music listening life have been getting a thing home, sticking it on and realising that I’d lucked my way into something good. Logical Progression Volume 1 and Doolittle two other great examples.
Oh yeah, once you started reading slavering hyperbole in the music press or had the benefit of recommendations of cool mates with taste, plopping stuff onto the turntable blind was thrilling, but the answer to the question “what first attracted you to the millionaire David Bowie?” would be “I saw the video on Swap Shop”.
Great post & great track selection, Bingo.
The Daisy Age was a joyous time for me & a bunch of pals & DLS were such fun & so brimming with talent, we really did think some kind of funky hip hop revolution was underway. The perfect counterbalance to the Gangsta Rap that was already exploding, but tainted IMO with horrendous misogyny & a host of other yuck connotations.
3 Feet High is one of the few hip-hop albums I bought on vinyl back in the day. I was browsing the bargain bin in Rival Records in Bristol, looking for something interesting to splurge a few quid on, having bought quite a few from there before (a couple of Rain Parade albums, the Jane Aire & The Belvederes LP, The Nitecaps – the shop was always good for decent second division bargains from the late 70s and early 80s).
What I heard on the speakers was hugely enjoyable, and after a few minutes I knew that’s what I would buy. I went on to get many more of theirs, but I still treasure my vinyl copy of the first one, with its goofy cartoon inner sleeve.
Gosh, 54 is no age at all; it’s a really terrible loss. Condolences to family and friends.
This is very sad. Nothing I can add to posts above, particularly Chimney (good to see you!) and Bingo.
Dave, may you rest in peace, rise in glory and all of the rest of it. A true original. x
Great piece by Petridis
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/feb/13/a-new-style-of-speak-the-lyrical-genius-of-trugoy-the-dove
I came here to praise Caesar, not to remind Rome that his band “single-handedly invented hip hop skits”.
There were skits on earlier, less well-known hip-hop records. Straight Out The Basement of Kooley High by Original Concept and Power by Ice T, off the top of my head.
Say No Go was the track that made me get 3 Feet… (on vinyl, probably the last year before I bought a new stereo with a CD player). I’d been a fan of rap/hip hop from the beginning, but never bought any singles or albums until De La came along (partly because I had very little money to buy anything in them days, partly because most record shops that I frequented didn’t sell them).
It certainly wasn’t the last, so thanks to Trugoy for being a large reason for making me take the plunge! 54 is way too young for a non-gangsta hip hop hero to go.
I echo the points made above. De La Soul were such a joyous, bright sound in 1989; I associate them with music blaring from car stereos as my school cohort began to learn to drive at that time. I understand 3 Feet High and Rising is going to be reissued for legit this year as well. Thanks Trugoy.
I suppose I’m the only one on here (who has 90% of DLS albums) who didn’t know his name was yogurt backwards??
And you a sounds op as well. Tch.
Nor me.
I always thought there was an “h” in it. No wonder I’m so crap at @Gary‘s WordTHINGY.
These rapper chaps are colonials, I’ll have you know, old bean.
Rappers recently.
You’re thinking of Yogurth, who I think was a character in Beowulf.
Often confused with Siarf Egamorf, his brother, who had a brief career in rap/hip hop favourites, Ooh Maman.