3 Feet high And Rising (1989) De La Soul
I moved to New York City on August 1st, 1988, not long after the Thompkins Square riots.The first few months were spent finding a job, getting paintings into a Soho gallery, the Holiday Season, finding my way east of Washington Square Park, and Happy New Year! That January I got hired at AMNH. On February 6, 1989, De La Soul dropped this classic. The Daisy Age was in all the stores, and it's the first record I bought in NYC. It's too bad I upgraded to a CD version in 1991. My long lost vinyl copy is now collectible.
I was a huge fan of Jamaican DJ Dub style Reggae, so digging "3 Feet High And Rising", and Hip Hop, in general wasn't much of a stretch. On May 19, 1989, Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing" came out along with "Fight The Power". I began taping "Yo! MTV Raps. I wanted to become an authentic New Yorker, as fast as I could, and it was definitely an exciting time to be there. I played "3 Feet High And Rising" to death, and have revisited many times over the years. I recently upgraded once again, back to 2 LPs of magenta vinyl. I'm keeping this one, and the CD.
I was a huge fan of Jamaican DJ Dub style Reggae, so digging "3 Feet High And Rising", and Hip Hop, in general wasn't much of a stretch. On May 19, 1989, Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing" came out along with "Fight The Power". I began taping "Yo! MTV Raps. I wanted to become an authentic New Yorker, as fast as I could, and it was definitely an exciting time to be there. I played "3 Feet High And Rising" to death, and have revisited many times over the years. I recently upgraded once again, back to 2 LPs of magenta vinyl. I'm keeping this one, and the CD.
-BBJ
3 comments:
I keep coming back to this one, as well.
The only fly in the ointment are the skits. They're fine here, but since EVERYONE decided they needed skits too and all those stabs at humor invariably fell flat and you just wanted to tell them to STOP with the skits, well I blame De La Soul for unintentionally starting that terrible trend. Hip hop is hard enough without sounding like you're auditioning for SNL. It's not really their fault, but still.... The songs are great and I def am down with the positivity of De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest and The Jungle Brothers (and the Beastie Boys, honorary Native Tonguers) rather than the gangsta rap. A classic album.
Hip hop's been all downhill since "Funky Cold Medina." 😎
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