Evergreen hip-hop trio De La Soul – now in their twentieth year together – are tonight in town to kick off the Wrangler Wanted weekend. Just to ram home the point, the stage is festooned in Wrangler jeans, an ill-conceived gimmick that lends the venue the ambience of a clothing store. Nonetheless, the NYC rap outfit are in flying form and deliver a top-notch performance.
De La Soul, of course, eschew the all-out sonic assault and confrontational lyrics of, say, Public Enemy or NWA, favouring instead a funky, soulful brand of hip-hop that’s closer in spirit to Arrested Development. Which isn’t to say that De La Soul (or indeed AD) shy away from addressing social issues – far from it, as illustrated by 3 Feet High And Rising’s classic anti-drug track, ‘Say No Go’ (sadly absent from the setlist tonight).
It’s just that, whereas a Public Enemy show has the feel of a political rally, De La Soul conjure the atmosphere of a particularly great house party. With Maseo rustling up the grooves on the decks, MCs Posdnous and Dave get everyone dancing to such hip-hop classics as ‘Ooh’, ‘All Good?’ and ‘The Magic Number’. During one of the few pauses for breath, the group introduce a couple of notable audience members – Jurassic 5’s Charli 2na and California-based rapper Madlib, themselves in town for a show at the Tivoli a couple of nights later.
Picking up the pace once again, the group perform further gems from their illustrious back catalogue, including ‘A Rollerskating Jam Named ‘Saturdays’’, ‘Me, Myself and I’ and the closing ‘Stakes Is High’. The trio at one point voice their frustration with US television’s tendency to ignore quality music, a state of affairs which has adversely affected De La Soul themselves (the influential BET network failed to offer any support to the group’s most recent album, the commercially under-performing The Grind Date).
Indeed, the biggest commercial success De La Soul have enjoyed in recent times was their 2005 collaboration with Gorillaz, ‘Feel Good Inc’, but on the evidence of this show, they are more than capable of bouncing back with another hit album.