With the spirit of the Daisy Age alive and well in current rap darlings such as Anderson .Paak and Chance the Rapper, De La Soul cruise back into the zeitgeist with this partly crowdfunded – and partly brilliant – new record. The Kickstarter cash is evident, with A-list guests such as Snoop and Usher, an orchestra swirling in updrafts around Estelle on Memory of …, and a gospel choir joining the Darkness’s Justin Hawkins for chants of “Fuck everyone, fuck everything” on Lord Intended.
As the latter suggests, your wackiness threshold may swiftly be reached, particularly on the interminable shaggy dog stories of Untold and Nosed Up. Other songs, like Snoopies, featuring David Byrne at peak David Byrne, have excellent elements wasted, by being crudely cut-and-shut together. But the way Pos and Dave rap, letting rhymes spill over bar intervals and beyond, is the biggest pleasure, and the straightforward hip-hop tracks such as Pain and Property of Spitkicker.com are perhaps the best. Lovely as jazz ballad Drawn is, with Little Dragon, you long for them to finally turn up on the mic.
