A deep dive into the making of De La Soul’s first album in twelve years.
This week hip-hop trio De La Soul released And The Anonymous Nobody…, their first album since 2004’s The Grind Date. The new album was self-released by the group after they raised over $600,000 via a Kickstarter campaign.
To celebrate the occasion De La Soul has shared a 33-minute documentary on YouTube titled We’re Still Here (now)… a documentary about nobody.
The short film focuses on the making of the album, including the fears and hopes of the crowndfunding campaign, meetings with the Kobalt Group, who handles licensing, touring, working with a wide set of collaborators, mixing the record, and the importance of hip-hop in De La Soul’s lives. Interspersed throughout are snippets of the album.
And The Anonymous Nobody… is a culmination of a new journey for the rap veterans, whose career began in the ’80s with early acclaim for albums like 3 Feet High & Rising and De La Soul Is Dead. Their Kickstarter campaign earned them five times more than they were asking, putting some pressure on the project while allowing them to aim big.
The album was produced by De La Soul using recordings of a live band with whom they worked exclusively, unlike their earlier sample-heavy material. It features Little Dragon, Daman Albarn, Snoop Dogg, Roc Marciano, 2 Chainz and more. It’s out now on digital and a variety of physical formats.
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