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| De La Soul (Photo Courtesy Instagram: @wearedelasoul) |
De La Soul has finally gone digital.
On Wednesday, the Grammy Award-winning rap group announced its iconic catalog will be released on streaming services for the first time ever on March 3 — the 34th anniversary of its debut album "3 Feet High and Rising."
"We can’t believe this day is finally here, and we are excited to be able to share our music with fans, old and new. Golnar, Rell, Faith and the Reservoir team have been great partners in this entire process. We’re grateful that our relationship with them all has enabled this to happen,” De La Soul said of the long-anticipated release in a statement.
The rest of the group's first six albums, "De La Soul Is Dead," "Buhloone Mindstate," "Stakes Is High," "Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump" and "AOI: Bionix," will also be made available.
De La Soul's label AOI will distribute the music in partnership with Reservoir Media and its subsidiary Chrysalis Records.
The move ends months of speculation on whether or not the move would really happen. Previously, infighting between the trio and their label Tommy Boy had kept De La Soul's work from being digitally distributed.
As we reported earlier Reservoir acquired Tommy Boy — founded by Tom Silverman in New York in 1981 and instrumental in launching the careers of Afrika Bambaataa, Queen Latifah, Digital Underground and Naughty By Nature amongst others — in June for a deal valued at $100 million dollars.
The purchase proved fortunate for De La Soul which was at an impasse in negotiations with Tommy Boy over streaming rights in 2019 after the label acquired the rights to its back catalog from Warner Records.
In August the group revealed during an Instagram live session that its whole catalog would be made available for streaming as a result of the deal.
"We have finally come down to a deal between ourselves and Reservoir Media to release our music in 2021," group member Dave "Trugoy" Jolicoeur said. "Our catalog will be released this year, we are working diligently with the good folks at Reservoir, and we sat down with them and got it done pretty quickly actually."
Made up of Jolicoeur, Kelvin "Posdnuos" Mercer and Vincent "Maseo" Mason, De La Soul were pioneers of alternative rap and prominent members of the so-called Native Tongues collective, along with A Tribe Called Quest, The Jungle Brothers and others known for the positive Afrocentric lyrics, eclectic samples and jazz-influenced beats. A 2006 collaboration with the Gorillaz on the single “Feel Good Inc.” earned it a Grammy.
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