Why 3 Feet High and Rising Still Resonates Today

3 Feet High and Rising: How it set the stage for alternative hip-hop.

Courtesy of AOI Records.

Do you actually know to whom you owe it that hip-hop is so diverse today? In addition to all the (rightly) angry voices, some spread positive thoughts with intelligent humor and much fun in the matter. Who is responsible for the fact that you proudly hold your backpack in the face of the haters today and can say: “Look, I’m hip-hop too?” No? Then, pay full attention to the following lines.

Already a few years ago, Juice wrote to all the realkeepers: “They invented your enemy image and the best arguments of your opponents.” But De La Soul has done much more than turn the rap culture completely to the left. Yasiin Bey, The Roots, or Kendrick Lamar carry on their legacy and ensure that today’s generations also remember the original ideas of our favorite culture. And by the way, they finally catapulted hip-hop into the children’s rooms of the middle and upper classes of America.

Kelvin, David, and Vincent are not so different from their peers: they do what they want, regardless of losses. Why do you have to wear heavy gold chains and curse what you can to live hip-hop? Why does rap only take place in the ghetto? These questions seem completely absurd from today’s point of view because nerdy suburban boys who wear colorful clothes and live rap from the bottom of their hearts appear today. But before March 1989, when De La Soul first entered the scene with 3 Feet High and Rising, this was unthinkable. In addition to the grim-looking types of Public Enemy and N.W.A., the three must have appeared like a joke when they got on stage with leather necklaces and peace signs and threw around daisies.

Posdnous, Trugoy the Dove, and Mase are anything but dangerous or particularly masculine. Instead of gloomy stories of a broken society, they shine with intelligent puns and much humor straight from a tranquil suburb on Staten Island. On their debut, they actually only used the word “f**k” once. All these circumstances ensure that the scene calls her a “hippie rapper,” and the educated bourgeoisie celebrates her for her witty entertainment at the same time.

Either way, De La Soul makes it clear: With their appearance, a “change in speak” takes place.

“Those involved with Peace who know the Soul’s down

Can see that the Soul has got a new sound.”

Over 23 tracks (and an “original version”), they entertain with subtle humor and eloquent puns. In each individual piece, there are countless references, not only to one’s own jokes but to the entire popular culture of the 80s. With 3 Feet High and Rising, Pos and Dove not only reinvent the narrative style of an entire genre but, together with DJ Mase, also bring skits to the plan of future hip-hop albums: single players, usually no longer than two minutes, which connect the individual songs and consist of confused sample fireworks. Now and then, the presenter of an invented game show speaks up and tests the three protagonists for their non-existent knowledge.

The funky sound of her historic album is due to Prince Paul, a guy who usually participates in Stetsasonic. The cooperation with the flower children from Amityville acts for him as an outlet for his own ideas. Paul samples himself across music history, mixes Led Zeppelin with James Brown and Johnny Cash, soul singer Lyn Collins with the Steve Miller Band, and lets his buddies moan exuberantly to Barry White. But the real heart of 3 Feet High and Rising is the incredibly smart rhyme salves of Pos and Dove.

“Difficult preaching is Posdnous’ pleasure

Pleasure and preaching starts in the heart

Something that stimulates music is the measure

Measure in the music, raised in three parts.”

What already begins in “The Magic Number” culminates in “This Is a Recording 4 Living In a Fulltime Era (L.I.F.E.)”. Every second verse line refers to the previous one. It turns the order and thus meaning of the words:

“Puttin’ in spin the rhyme, rappers fear so

Fear so much of what Pos is puttin’

Couldn’t do better, the punks they don’t try hard

Try hard enough, they don’t, so they couldn’t.”

With incredible lyrical finesse, De La tells humorous stories of Jenny and “Jimmy,” who swim against the tide (“Tread Water”) and have holes in the garden because other MCs steal their ideas (“Potholes In My Lawn”). They explain the “Ghetto Thang” in a different way than their colleagues, create an anti-drug song with “Say No Go,” and ask you to be yourself in Take It Off.

All this happens without the well-known index finger. Even today, it still sounds like a beneficial alternative to the otherwise so violent verbal exchange of the rappers on this side and beyond the big pond. Together with the Jungle Brothers and A Tribe Called Quest, Dove, Pos, and Mase founded the Native Tongue movement, which also sustainably influences today’s hip-hop culture with its peaceful idea of respectful coexistence. Even if the sound of De La Soul already became noticeable with the successor De La Soul Is Dead, the tone of 3 Feet High and Rising not only shaped an entire generation but also the entire hip-hop culture.