De La Soul

Formed in the late 1980s in Amityville, New York, De La Soul is a hip-hop trio consisting of Kelvin Mercer (Posdnuos), David Jude Jolicoeur (Trugoy the Dove, later Dave), and Vincent Mason (Maseo). Associated with alternative hip hop, De La Soul made its mark with the 1989 album 3 Feet High and Rising, produced with Prince Paul, which created a playful world built on eclectic samples of soul, funk, pop, and spoken word, and a memorable use of skits. The group later moved away from that image with De La Soul Is Dead (1991), followed by Buhloone Mindstate (1993) and Stakes Is High (1996), where the writing became more reflective and more critical of the music industry and American society. As a member of the Native Tongues collective alongside Jungle Brothers and A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul engaged in numerous collaborations—notably with Gorillaz—while maintaining a steady discography with Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump (2000), AOI: Bionix (2001), The Grind Date (2004), and And the Anonymous Nobody… (2016). Known for a frequently conceptual approach to the rap album and for the prominence of sampling in their work, De La Soul has remained active on stage despite the death of David Jude Jolicoeur in 2023.