It’s been 20 years since the release of De La Soul’s ground breaking record De La Soul Is Dead and to celebrate, Posdnous, Trugoy and Maseo threw one hell of a party at Melbourne’s Billboard Nightclub.
Legendary hip hop producer and one half of the illustrious Handsome Boy Modelling School Prince Paul kicked off the festivities with a cracking DJ set that had the room up and jumping to a smooth blend of nineties hip hop anthems from Bel Biv Devoe, Naughty By Nature, Montell Jordan, Cypress Hill, House of Pain and Beastie Boys.
The crowd erupted as De La Soul took to the stage and launched into an energetic rendition of “Hands Up”. The three piece are still at the top of their game and ooze attitude and charisma. Their set involved plenty of crowd interaction with Posdnous and Trugoy confiscating phones from anyone who wasn’t dancing hard enough and they had the room eating out of the palm of their hands and obeying their every instruction as they played through a choice selection from their vast back catalogue including “Potholes In My Lawn”, “Stakes Is High”, “The Grind Date” and “Ooh”. Posdnous dived into the crowd and showed some love to the fans with a lot of awesome dancing and even stopped to pose for a photo with yours truly before leaping back onstage to get on with the show.
The last half of the set saw all of the old favourites come out and the crowd lost their shit grinding to “A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays” and “Me, Myself and I”. The boys encored with “It’s So Easy” and “Ring Ring Ha Ha Hey” before inviting us all to the after party, stopping to sign a few autographs and then disappearing back stage.
There aren’t words adequate to describe the infectious happy energy that is a De La Soul live show. Their eclectic sampling and off the wall lyrics still sound fresh and relevant to a 21st century audience and I hope to party with them again next time they’re in town.
