De La Soul Artist Biography

De La Soul’s 1989 debut album, 3 Feet High and Rising, was a commercial and critical success, hailed as an alternative hip hop masterpiece. The LP parodied materialism in hip hop culture, made use of self-deprecating humor and included samples from a wide variety of sources, from doo-wop to country to children’s music. The trio – Kelvin “Posdnuos” Mercer, David “Trugoy the Dove” Jolicoeur and Vincent “P.A. Pasemaster Mase” Mason – formed in high school in Amityville, New York in 1988. De La Soul influenced numerous artists from Black Eyed Peas and Digable Planets to OutKast and Childish Gambino.