For much of the past year, Mass Appeal Records has overseen a seven-album “Legend Has It” series of releases that celebrate the golden era of hip-hop. First five installments – Slick Rick's Victory, Raekwon's The Emperor's New Clothes, Phantom Killah's High end clientele 2, Mobb Deep's endlessAnd Big L's Harlem's Best: Return of the King — sometimes sounded like outdated reminders of past glory. (The last part of “The legend is…” Us And DJ Premier's Light yearsfalls on December 12.) But with From the heart's Cabin in the skythe series truly achieves the goal stated in a press release earlier this year: to “preserve the past, celebrate the present, and propel hip-hop into the future.” Ironically, this future involves learning to accept, process, and even celebrate the passing of death.
Hip-hop is rife with unusual tributes to lost loved ones, from 2Pac's “Pour Out a Little Liquor” to Clipse's “The Birds Don't Sing.” Album-length treatises seem more rare: Saba's album Take care of meTorn by grief for a murdered friend, it comes to mind. Cabin in the Skyfor its part, evokes artistry beyond the boundaries of genre, e.g. Stereolalab's Margarine Eclipsewhere the Chicago avant-pop group struggled to cope with the loss of longtime member Mary Hansen. On that 2004 album, lead vocalist Laetitia Sadier was only able to play a few songs before she helplessly harmonized “Margie,” as if reaching for a voice that was no longer there. Cabin in the Skywhere surviving members Kelvin “Posdnous” Mercier and Vincent “DJ Maseo” Mason honor the late Dave “Tough Pigeon” Jolicoeur is a bit like this. Numerous cuts unfold, only for Pose to suddenly start reminiscing about his late friend or, in “Quick 16 for Mom,” Killer Mike, honoring the memory of his late mother. He and hype man Maceo sound like they're dancing through tears, both jubilant and traumatized by the tragedy they've endured.
De La Soul have always framed their albums within a conceptual framework. “The Ninth Season,” as Posdnous calls it Cabin in the Skyno different. It opens with a class roll call led by Giancarlo Esposito. Young listeners will recognize this name by Breaking Bad And Better call Saulwhile older adults will notice a nod to the actor's outstanding performance in Spike Lee's 1988 HBCU homage. School Daze. Esposito takes part and rattles off a long list of contributors like Nas, Common, Q-Tip and Slick Rick before finally settling on Trugoy's name. His voice trails off as he asks, “Dave? Dave…”
Cabin in the sky This is De La's first album since 2016. And anonymous nobodyand an hour and 10 minutes later, it sounds like it's been tinkering with it for nearly a decade, long before Trugoy's death in 2023. Little Dragon's Yukimi Nagano reprises Bananarama's “Cruel Summer” in “Cruel Summers Bring FIRE LIFE!!”, only for the track to change a minute or so later to Trugoy the Dove harmonizing with a Roy Ayers loop. “Everybody Loves the Sun” by Ubiquity and the statement: “Shit works like Baltimore.” It then jumps into “Day in the Sun (Gettin' Wit U),” with Yummy Bingham singing the chorus in the style of Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway's “Back Together Again.” Pose's peculiarly awkward syntax is present throughout: “Through the blue pastures, the wandering clouds / The sun saw the pandering from the front seat.” It's joyfully twee and, yes, a little silly and corny. However, its portrayal of grown adults happily and hopelessly partying with old people seems more honest and entertaining than Ghostface Killah cosplaying his robust youth on High end clientele 2. “Mayday! Mayday!/We got rappers living good here like it's still their prime,” Posdnous raps on “Palm of His Hands.” Then, his voice turning serious, he adds, “How are we still here? Only God knows why.”
Longtime fans will notice how Cabin in the Skyhall of upbeat tunes, references to old-school roller skating and bizarre skits featuring Saturday Night Live's Jay Pharaoh remembers De La's past as De La Soul is dead. Unlike this 1991 gem, Cabin in the Sky isn't heavy on satire, preferring instead the evangelical fervor of “Believe (in Him),” a number noted by Lady Stout and C. Butler and the Collective. As he has throughout his career, Pose spends several verses chastising wayward souls in the black community. “So many hypnotized by the chaos/They hear their ears ringing/It's the gods trying to straighten them out/But unlike the piano, they choose to be out of tune, that's where you find them,” he raps on “EN EFF,” a collaboration with Black Thought and DJ Premier and the album's highlight. Previously, he had spoken these lines with withering sarcasm or barely concealed anger. Executives are still debating whether De La's 1996 signature “Stakes Is High” is a powerful call to action against rap's aesthetic decline into street rap clichés, or whether it is an offensive and classist attack. Here he simply seems resigned to his fate. “Live and let life give and when death is near/I hope my seeds surround me/Tell them to love each other/Tell my son to treat a woman better than I treated his mother,” he raps on the title track.
Nearly four decades after De La Soul banded together as teenagers on Long Island, he still knows how to create albums of events that capture our attention. It's one of their lesser-recognized gifts—few rap artists deserve critical fervor with every release—and a big reason why Cabin in the Sky seems exciting, despite the excess of sentimental pop tones. The trio, now a duo, excel at sequencing tracks and combining ideas, so their thoughts on overcoming grief and seizing the opportunities of growing up seem more life-affirming than saccharine. Pos' songwriting may not be as exciting as it has been in the past, but he effectively portrays himself as a black musician wary of the fact that “We're worth millions but not millionaires/Cause the rules of the music industry are in shambles,” as he put it on “EN EFF,” but still optimistic about what's to come. There's little to ask for in the growing subgenre of old man rap.
