De La Soul
3 Feet High and Rising
de la's debut represented a new path for hiphop a reaction to conventions that had turned into cliches it was friendly and playful enough to cross over to a pop audience thanks to prince paul's production which found the funk hiding inside steely dan and 'schoolhouse rock' but complicated and tough enough to be hugely influential in the hiphop world cryptic but ecstatic and sometimes sexy especially the ingenious doubleentendre 'buddy' trugoy and posdnuos's lyrics invented a 'new style of speak' dense with selfinvented slang and metaphors the hits including 'say no go' and 'me myself and i' are delightful but the little sketches and soundexperiments between them make the whole disc flow effortlessly this version has an extra cd of 14 tracks