High and Rising

A Book About De La Soul

De: Marcus J. Moore

Narrado por: JD Jackson

A stunning cultural biography of De La Soul, the era-defining hip-hop trio that touched millions of lives and changed rap forever.

De La Soul burst onto the scene with the release of their groundbreaking 1989 album 3 Feet High & Rising, an “anything goes” hip-hop masterpiece hailed as a new masterwork from a bygone era of Black experimentation.

Formed in Long Island in 1988 by Kelvin “Posdnuos” Mercer, Dave “Trugoy the Dove” Jolicoeur, and Vincent “Maseo” Mason, De La Soul rebuked classification and appealed to the Black alternative. Their music was positive and psychedelic, their imagery full of flowers and peace signs. It was rap with a broad sonic palette which set the blueprint for an entire generation of artists who followed. But as quickly as De La ascended, they were faced with the pressures of a changing industry and bitter legal battles.

Completed in the wake of Dave’s passing and the group’s arrival on streaming platforms after years in digital purgatory, High and Rising tells the story of one of the most influential rap groups of all time. In the process, acclaimed music journalist Marcus J. Moore braids in a deeply personal coming-of-age story about his journey through life with De La as a backdrop.

The first book about De La Soul, High and Rising shows that De La Soul is Black history, American history, world history, our history. This is a tale about staying the course, and how holding true to your virtue can lead to dynamic results.

©2024 Marcus J. Moore (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers

Beautiful combination of biography and memoir

De La Soul has always been deserving of their flowers musically and culturally, and Marcus J. Moore truly does the group justice with this book. Marcus did a wonderful job of telling the group's story and measuring their cultural impact, but it's the book's powerful integration of his own personal story that brings the book to life. He speaks about the way that De La's music helped him love himself, and how it basically accompanied him through every step of his life. As journalists and writers, we sometimes detach ourselves from the work in order to cover it correctly. But Marcus recognized that personal connection is exactly what made a group like De La so wonderful in the first place. He wrote about the group with love and veracity, and about his own life with stunning vulnerability. Highly recommend.

A terrible disappointment

As a lifelong De La Soul superfan, I was psyched when I heard about this book on NPR. Now I wish I'd waited and done a bit of research before purchasing it. I didn't realize that De La Soul themselves had no involvement in the book, and are now in fact urging fans to avoid supporting it.

After nonetheless suffering through it, I can see why. First, I don't believe the author really gets De La Soul or their true genius. The stories he shares about them are nearly all ones I'd heard before in existing articles, interviews and podcasts, and some of the author's retellings of them sounds almost plagiarized from some of these sources - in particular, the Prince Paul interviews in the "What Had Happened Was" podcast.

Since the author has no actual inside information on the group, he resorts to making strange assumptions about what their feelings motivations were. His analysis seemed way off a lot of the time, and he ends up repeating and even contradicting himself in a meandering narrative. What's worse, he frequently comes across as just really wanting people to hear about him and his thoughts as opposed to about the group and their art. He certainly adds little to nothing to the overall conversation about De La Soul and their art that hasn't already been said.

I suggest waiting for a better bio of the group that actually includes direct input from the Pos and Maseo and hopefully others.

waste of time

i feel like i got scammed. has nothing to do with de la . weird. i learned nothing about them