De La Soul

Amityville, a demo tape and a debut that changed the rules

De La Soul formed in 1988 in Amityville, on Long Island, New York, when three schoolfriends, Kelvin Mercer, David Jolicoeur and Vincent Mason, took the names Posdnuos, Trugoy the Dove and Maseo. A demo of the track Plug Tunin' caught the ear of producer Prince Paul, and Tommy Boy Records signed them.

The album that followed, 3 Feet High and Rising, arrived in 1989 and has been called a hip-hop masterpiece for the way it stitched together samples from far outside the genre's usual sources and wrapped them in skits, wordplay and a daisy-age playfulness that sat at odds with the harder rap of the moment. Me Myself and I, Eye Know and The Magic Number remain the songs crowds shout loudest for nearly four decades later.

The group spent the next decade complicating that image. De La Soul Is Dead in 1991 killed off the flower-child tag, Buhloone Mindstate in 1993 pushed into denser jazz-informed territory, and Stakes Is High in 1996 delivered a state-of-the-nation address whose title track is now the second most-played song in their live repertoire.

The records that matter

The 2000s brought the two-part Art Official Intelligence project, Mosaic Thump in 2000 and Bionix in 2001, followed by The Grind Date in 2004. The group's only Grammy win came in 2006, for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, for their guest turn on Gorillaz's Feel Good Inc., after three earlier nominations. A crowd-funded album, and the Anonymous Nobody..., followed in 2016.

For years the early catalogue was a ghost. Sample-clearance complications kept the Tommy Boy albums off streaming services entirely. After the rights were negotiated, the first six albums finally reached streaming platforms on 3 March 2023, giving a new generation legal access to the records that made the group's name.

The timing was cruel. Jolicoeur, who had lived with congestive heart failure since 2017, died on 12 February 2023, weeks before that release. The group's future was suddenly a question rather than an assumption.

Cabin in the Sky and the album made with a missing voice

The answer came in October 2025, when De La Soul announced Cabin in the Sky, their ninth studio album, released on 21 November 2025 through Mass Appeal Records as part of the label's Legend Has It series of veteran hip-hop releases. According to the group, work began in February 2025 after Mass Appeal's Peter Bittenbender approached them about the series.

The title comes from a 1943 all-Black film musical featuring Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington that Posdnuos happened across on television. In the announcement interview he explained the thinking behind the record: after the loss, he said, he had gone and got Maseo out of the hole, and the pair decided to treat Dave the way the characters in Beat Street treat Ramon, keeping him alive and celebrating him. He added that there were times he was writing rhymes and getting goosebumps because he felt Dave would be saying that's dope.

Several songs use vocals Jolicoeur recorded before his death, and he produced the closing track, Don't Push Me. Around him the guest list reads like a roll call of the group's peers: Q-Tip, Nas, Common, Slick Rick, Killer Mike, Black Thought and Bilal, with production from DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Jake One, Nottz and Supa Dave West among others. The album runs a little over seventy minutes, preceded by the singles The Package on 6 November 2025 and Day in the Sun (Gettin' wit U) on 14 November.

Maseo told Rolling Stone Australia in November 2025 that, given the title and how the album flows, it sounds like Dave is working on the record from the heavens. Posdnuos was blunter about the practical change: he would normally do Dave's ad-libs, but now he has to do a whole verse.

Where they stand in 2026

Critically the record landed well. Cabin in the Sky holds a Metacritic score of 81 from 11 reviews, with four-star notices from NME, Rolling Stone and The Times, a three-star review in The Guardian and 7.4 from Pitchfork. It reached number two on the UK R&B Albums chart and number 12 on the Scottish albums chart, and appeared in year-end lists from The Ringer, Paste and Complex.

On 3 March 2026 the group made its first appearance at NPR's Tiny Desk, using the set largely to play the new album live. Consequence reported that an NPR name placard reading simply Dave was placed front and centre, and that the set ran from YUHDONTSTOP, Will Be and Much More through Stakes Is High, Breakadawn and A Quick 16 for Mama before closing on Me Myself and I.

The same month took them to Australia for dates in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Through the summer of 2026 the itinerary widened again: a free show in Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens on 17 July, a festival slot at Park Live in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on 22 August, and support dates with Nas in Long Beach and at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View on 28 and 29 August, followed by Bumbershoot in Seattle.

On 24 June 2026 Erykah Badu announced her LIVE tour of North America with The Alchemist and De La Soul on every date. It opened at Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois, on 10 September and runs through Detroit, Toronto, Cleveland, Uncasville, Forest Hills Stadium in Queens on 18 September, Wolf Trap in Virginia, Indianapolis and Denver before closing with California dates that end at the Hollywood Bowl on 29 September. Smino joins for San Diego, Berkeley and Los Angeles. Beyond that, Songkick lists Mempho Fest in Memphis on 10 October and a Red Rocks date with Cypress Hill on 29 October.

What a De La Soul show is like now

On stage it is Posdnuos on the microphone and Maseo behind the decks, with Maseo also handling vocals and the occasional sung line. Reviewing the Enmore Theatre show in Sydney on 3 March 2026, Rolling Stone Australia described a relatively bare stage, without the colourful visuals the group has used elsewhere, and a set of roughly fifty minutes that moved from Say No Go and Me Myself and I through The Package and Run It Back!! from the new album before the run of Stakes Is High, A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays, Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey), The Magic Number and Oooh.

The reviewer's central point was that the pleasure of the group live is that they do not necessarily stick to the script: Maseo drops surprise beats and scratches, both men play fast and loose with lyrics, and the crowd went spare for the classics. Set length depends heavily on the billing. Setlist.fm logged the Queens park show in July at 75 minutes and 13 songs, opening with The Return of D.S.T. and Freedom of Speak, while the Long Beach support slot for Nas on 28 August was ten songs in about 35 minutes, still finding room for Potholes in My Lawn, The Grind Date and Stakes Is High before the inevitable Me Myself and I closer. Across the group's logged history that song has been played more than 150 times and Stakes Is High close to 120.

On the current Badu run the group is one of three names on the bill, so expect a compact festival-length set weighted towards the hits with two or three Cabin in the Sky songs folded in, and a quiet nod to the third Plug who is no longer there.