The event made history. On April 8, the Royal Albert Hall, the prestigious London performance hall adjoining Hyde Park, hosted one of the greatest groups in the history of hip-hop: De La Soul. The circular theater had already received rap and R’n’B artists on several occasions. Thus, the couple Beyoncé and Jay-Z took to the stage in 2016. But the concert of De La Soul, formed in 1987 in the State of New York, brought to light a more unknown story. That of early hip-hop, block parties black neighborhoods of large American cities: that of a music that was once marginal and has become the most listened to genre in the world.
A story honored on August 11 on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of an event judged to have founded the movement: a party organized by New Yorker DJ Kool Herc on August 11, 1973, in the Sedgwick Avenue district, in the Bronx. When the MoMA wanted to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of hip-hop, it posted on Twitter the photo of the cover of 3 Feet High and Rising (1989), De La Soul’s debut album.
Thirty-five years after the group’s formation, its musicians, who play on August 30 in another major venue, the Philharmonie de Paris, are still admired, applauded for having infused hip-hop with a sense of humor and an unprecedented openness.
Shifted texts
The downside is the death of one of the members, David Jude Jolicoeur, alias “Trugoy the Dove”, on February 12, from heart failure, just two months before the London concert at the Royal Albert Hall. . The disappearance of the one who mumbled the first rhymes of their tube Me, Myself and I leaves to his friends Vincent “Maseo” Mason and Kelvin “Posdnuos” Mercer the charge of representing the group.
De La Soul is the happy marriage between a style of clothing (loose clothes stolen from their parents, colorful accessories when others preferred bling…) and music that borrows from all musical genres, psychedelic rock, pop , blues. A trio of kids from New York State who redrew the contours of popular music by daring to make rare musical and visual choices. And that has influenced many musicians.
Indeed, at the announcement of the death of David Jude Jolicoeur, the biggest names in the industry paid tribute to him, such as Pharrell Williams, just appointed artistic director of the Louis Vuitton men’s line, on his Twitter feed. For his part, rapper and comedian Common wrote: “De La Soul is everything to me. They took me under their wing, took me on tour and changed my life. They invited me on a song and changed it again. »
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