DE LA SOUL Cabin In The Sky( Mass Appeal)
Rap music, in general, has always had a way of keeping emotions at a distance, never quite comfortable with being openly vulnerable. Often thought of as a sign of weakness, rappers had a difficult time in the early days expressing feelings of loss, even though violence and tragedy were a common occurrence in everyday life. De La Soul’ s new album, Cabin In The Sky, is basically an album-long tribute to founding member Dave Jolicoeur, aka Trugoy The Dove, who passed away in 2023 from heart failure. From the beginning, De La Soul never fit in with the current thing. On their 1989 debut album, 3 Feet High & Rising, they posited themselves as antieverything. When N. W. A. were the biggest thing going, De La Soul took the opposite approach. Instead of gangster posturing, they came across as well-read hippies in day-glo colors, looking like guys more likely to be at a university poetry slam than at the club. Where hip-hop had always been a sample-based genre, De La Soul really expanded what a rap song could sound like, using unlikely bits of songs from dusty, unhip sources like Steely Dan, Hall & Oates, and even Schoolhouse Rocks. While never reaching the upper echelons of the Billboard charts, they started an alternative hip-hop movement known as Native Tongues with fellow like-minded visionaries like A Tribe Called Quest, Jungle Brothers, Black Sheep, and Queen Latifah, and pushed the art form forward. Emcees Kelvin“ Posdnous” Mercer and Dave“ Trugoy the Dove” Jolicoeur( along with DJ Vincent“ Maseo” Mason) had a freewheeling chemistry that was perfectly suited for discussing deep topics with an approachable lightness. Take a third of that partnership away, and the whole thing could stumble and fall. Last year, when Nas’ Mass Appeal Records announced the Legend Has It series, a new De La Soul album was revealed. Would this be a
slapped-together cash grab throwing unreleased Dave verses over modern productions, similar to the dozens of 2pac albums released in the decade after his passing? The answer is a resounding " NO." Most of Cabin In The Sky was worked on with Dave as a willing and able participant, and the album was positioned to be De La Soul’ s big comeback after a decade away, as well as a way to capitalize on the group’ s catalogue finally being on streaming platforms after years of sample clearances and legal disputes. When tragedy struck, it gave Posdnous and Maceo a battery in the back to send Dave off in a respectable, classy way. From the opening classroom skit where the teacher conducts an attendance check, mentioning every single person in the De La Soul universe before asking,“ Where’ s Dave?” to the throwback early 90s production thanks to DJ Premier, Pete Rock, and the group, Cabin In The Sky is a triumph. This record spares no expense; it’ s lushly produced and features an A-list lineup of Gen X rappers like Nas, Common, Black Thought, Slick Rick, and Killer Mike, but the real star of the show here is our bespectacled bard, Posdnous. It’ s a wildly psychedelic affair where the beats are often tapestries of dozens of samples and sound effects layered together.“ Sunny Storms” finds Posdnous getting philosophical over a funky DJ Premier beat where he proffers“ the best weight loss is losing the opinions of others” and“ see the blessings giving you a way to take a crisis in midlife and turn it into a chrysalis.” Deep stuff. Never wallowing in the mire, Cabin In The Sky jumps around quickly from a summertime jam with Q-Tip“ Run It Back,” to the block party-ready“ Cruel Summers Bring Fire Life”( which brilliantly mashes up Bananarama and Quincy Jones) to the Sunday morning gospel of“ Believe( In Him). Dave gets chances to shine throughout, including a funny, warped take on the nursery rhyme“ Patty Cake.”
Built like a true action adventure film, the whole thing builds to the crescendo of
16 illinoisentertainer. com march 2026