Fecam said:
Beautiful Night sounds pretty good to me.
Listening now Under the influence and this is a great song. Not entirely sure what the ridiculous fuss is all about. This would be a standout track on a a PUTS LP..
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EP
Joined: Nov '11
Posts: 232 -
EP
Joined: Nov '11
Posts: 232Posted 10 years ago #Snoop doing his best Smooth B impression.
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P fan #1
Joined: Oct '08
Posts: 584Posted 9 years ago #So this has been out for a week or so now....I've been bumping it on pretty heavy rotation & I have to say I'm still not feeling it as much as I wanted to. I backed it on Kickstarter as I've always believed in De La but I am struggling with this. The tracks without any guests on them are pretty good but apart from the little dragon track I don't think the guests add much to the album as a whole. I am really hoping this will be a grower but it might take a while. Being it caused a bit of a reaction on the forum I'm just wondering what everyone else thinks??
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P fan #1
Joined: Aug '09
Posts: 588Posted 9 years ago #I gave up on De La during AOI. They started doing that "rap and bullshizzle" they'd often speak out against on their previous albums. Grind Date was fully a "rap and bullshizzle" album, since then I knew they were a lost cause. I would rant on as I would have in the past, but what's the use. Musically stuck in the past, don't care about the present, with few exceptions of course.
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P fan #1
Joined: May '10
Posts: 577Posted 9 years ago #De La have reinvented themselves throughout their carreer, but they've taken it way too far for my liking here.
I honestly had no expectations whatsoever for this record, but as I stated on the previous page the whole kickstarter campaign and promoting the sampling of studio musician's sessions as some next level innovation didn't sit too well with me.
Wasn't really feeling that advance EP either, but despite all that I peeped the album snippets earlier this week. Sad to say they left me completely cold.Have De La lost their Soul (or their mind)? What's with all the unnecessary/awkward "big name" cross genre features!?! And then I saw that scene from that 45min "documentary" on the new record, where they appear to be sitting in the offices of some music/promotion agency and people are tossing around random artist names. I may have read too much into that, but that was the final straw for me as it struck me as the exact kind of thing that's wrong with mainstream/pop music nowadays: you simply can't artificially design art/music to appeal to the widest possible audience by relying in some 3rd party's "expertise" or some executive's ideas. Chances are 99% the result will be an utterly transparent failure, and even if against all odds it does work (= sell) it's probably gonna end up being schlock.
Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps (many?) people really DO like/enjoy this record. But I really have no interest at all in listening to this album in full based on what I've heard/seen up to this point.
*edit* here's that "documentary" I mentioned above
That scene(s) I referenced are around the 5-6 minute mark. ("who is that?" SMH) -
EP
Joined: Oct '14
Posts: 122Posted 9 years ago #So here's my take about this album...I like it, some awesome tracks and weird, eclectic tracks, but most of them don't fit on the album either because De La had to appeal to a certain crowd and force these artists on the album, or it doesn't fit for a hip hop album, ESPECIALLY a De La album. Just feels out of touch for them and they easily could've been more present on the album. I remember the Thes interview for Southern Vangard when he commented on this this album and said not only that it would be a f***ing nightmare to not only appeal to yourself and your group but to all the funders, but also it felt forced and calculated (mainly 2Chainz [really????] and Snoop [although Pain is a very well done track] and Little Dragon, to name a few) to the point that it saturated the album and De La itself-you'd think after 12 years they'd be super hyped to go back to their roots and make a classic. I'll give them credit that the Kickstarter approach was smart and very business savvy (they made some money, and potentially created a solution for their digital records problem, being Warner not wanting to release their music digitally cuz of sample concerns), but it's just not De La Soul and I feel like their own effort or even a reunion with Prince Paul could've made this album much better and much more respected. Great idea to sample (sort of) your own music and make an album out of it (good way to connect to fans, old and new), and I really do like the album (especially since I had faith since I was a donor and received some awesome "rewards", albeit almost two years late)), but it could be better. Too much business involved in this album, but a solid one (imo) with the end product, mainly cuz its weird af and unexpected (for better or for worse).
Already waiting for the Prince Paul reunion for their next one!
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P fan #1
Joined: May '05
Posts: 1,528Posted 9 years ago #I received my Kickstarter backed set of USB drives and was happy with those. Made for a cool collector's item. The album was pretty underwhelming and lacked any punch. For me, it was a rather boring effort. The only song that stood out to me was Drawn and that was due to the second half of the song. Posdnuos' verse was classic De La wordplay.
Not that I want to bash De La, but I expected more from such legends. Not because I backed it but it's De La and all their albums have stood the test of time. This one though, probably won't. With that said, I'd rather see this album top the Billboard rap charts than most of the other albums that do. I hope this is just a start and more is forthcoming. Fan backed or not.
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LP
Joined: Apr '14
Posts: 300Posted 9 years ago #I really like the new album, though I completely agree that all the guest artists are rather cumbersome. Could've done without 2/3 of them, at least. And I thought the idea of sampling their own band was cool considering all the bullshizzle sampling problems they've had to endure. But I also thought it was cool because 1) it made for a cohesive sound, and 2) even though it was a totally different sounding album than they've done, I thought they pieced the samples together in a way that was still very similar to their early albums.
I'm sure we'd all agree that their first 3 albums are stone classics (Buhloone Mindstate is my favorite), but I'm not a big fan of anything after that (Stakes Is High is ok, I guess). So I would say that this is their best album since 1993. Not that it's as good as those first ones, but it's a big step in the right direction.
I thought the beats were subtle, but interesting. And they did a good job with the skits, especially with keeping them to a minimum. But what makes the album for me is their concept of the Anonymous Nobody juxtaposed with today's "look at me, look at me, gimme, gimme" groupthink. Plus, I loved the artwork, and Pos's thank you's in the liner notes.
To sum up: solid effort even if not in the top tier of their albums. Hoping that this album will lead to their back catalogue coming out of stasis, and then maybe they'll have more sampling independence in the future. A reunion with Prince Paul would be awesome too.
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P fan #1
Joined: May '10
Posts: 577Posted 9 years ago #I'm really surprised at how much people seem to be defending this record...
Everyone's entitled to their own opinion of course, but even most of the positive reviews I've seen strike me as conveying at least some degree of disappointment in how this record turned out?
I'm keenly aware how difficult it can be to admit - even to yourself - when a beloved artist's latest oevre doesn't measure up to expectations, but here's a couple of questions I've started asking myself on such sad occasions:- would you have become a fan of said artist if this was the first you'd heard by/of them?
- are there enough good/standout tracks that you'd consider buying the album just for these? (And anything that isn't actually on the album doesn't count - what's the point if the best stuff is only available on youtube, as iTunes bonus or whatever)
- does the new material make any sense compared to/add to the artist's overall catalogue? Or to put it another way are you, the listener, the one who's changed, or is it the artist..? And how and why did this change come about?Personally I'd have to say De La overreached on this project, and despite the amount of money it made through the pledges and subsequent sales, they pretty much blew it.
*edit* I really don't see how Prince Paul would be able to magically remedy things either. It probably wouldn't hurt to have him on board in some capacity, but if one could simply replicate succesful formulas that way someone better have a d@mn good explanation for all the recent Star Wars movies...
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LP
Joined: Apr '14
Posts: 300Posted 9 years ago #Good video, hadn't seen that. It definitely paints them as a group that is always trying to work beyond expectations, which of course hasn't always worked out for them (financially at least). But it does explain how there can be such divergent opinions on how good a particular album is.
I was listening to the album more over the weekend and still like it a lot (there's only 2 tracks I don't like: Lord Intended and Here In After), and maybe one of the reasons I like it is that I had very low expectations for it. Being that it was their first album in a while, they were using a new recording and sampling format, and that their previous 4 albums before this weren't good, I certainly wasn't expecting a masterpiece. Not that this is a masterpiece, but I don't think it has to be for me to enjoy it. And I don't think it has to be as good as their original stuff (or even in the same style as their original stuff) in order to be good either.
To use The P as an example, I don't think TGOS 1&2 represent their best work but I still think they're great. Not every album has to be better than the last or groundbreaking in some way to be worth listening to and enjoying. This is definitely a different type of album for De La, like Highlighter was for PUTS. Highlighter isn't my favorite PUTS album, but I still love it. Then they came back with 12SP, which was much more in what I would consider the PUTS style, and maybe De La will do something similar the next time around.
I also think that it's hard to judge De La's more recent past work because of the sampling and back catalogue issues that they've had to deal with that no other hip-hop group has had to deal with (obviously most groups have had sampling issues, but I can't think of one that has had their career derailed as much as De La Soul has because of it). Without those problems I don't think we get bad albums like AOI or Grind Date. So I have no problem taking this album on its own rather than comparing it to their career as a whole. And I certainly don't feel the need to "defend" it. If I didn't like it, I wouldn't have bought it.
Hopefully this leads to more good stuff. And it would still be great for them to get back together with Prince Paul. Maybe adding back that zaniness will help them reach that top tier again.
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P fan #1
Joined: May '10
Posts: 577Posted 9 years ago #That mass appeal vid only came out a day or two before I posted it, so it's about as current as it gets.
We'll have to agree to disagree about the musical quality or our respective appreciation of 'Nobody', 'AOI' (remember there's 2 of these 'Mosaic Thump' and 'Bionix') and 'Grind Date', but that's okay.
What do De La's problems with sample clearance making their back catalogue available digitally* really have to do with their last few records though? The Turtles vs. De La and O'Sullivan vs Biz Markie may have been the most publicized and game changing sampling lawsuits, but everyone in the industry was affected to some degree. I really think it's a bit far fetched to try and paint especially this latest album as a direct result of things that happened decades ago. And I'll say it again: the technique of sampling your own music/studio sessions is not as new or groundbreaking as it's made out to be either. I couldn't say if anyone has ever made an entire album using this approach, but it's definitely been done before.
* Also, as far as getting paid from digital/streaming services: I doubt any money the group could make from this (a lot of it is mere fractions of cents so you need a TON, especially if you don't happen to own the rights your own music) would come close to the nest egg Mase, Pos and Dave must have built up from 25+ years of touring and 600k of kickstarter pledges. But whatever revenues there would be certainly play a part in why the topic is being discussed in the first place - it's not like there aren't other ways to obtain the music in question after all...
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