Overshine vibes:
What we are listening to
Curated musical selections to pair with wine, life, love, and everything.
Playlist: De La Funk
Dance floor heat sampled by De La Soul
A Daisy Age of Funk
When their first album 3 Feet High and Rising was released in 1989, it dropped a colorful and creative bomb on the hip-hop scene and birthed the era of conscious rap. It stayed true to hip hop’s roots while opening rap music up to a whole new audience of listeners who may not have been ready for the current wave of gangster and hardcore rap.
De La’s music (spearheaded by the legendary Prince Paul) took rap’s sampling esthetic to a new level with their sample heavy production, diverging from the ubiquitous James Brown and Parliament samples into the unexpected, grabbing pieces of rock songs, oldies, children’s’ music records, and whatever they found at the back of the record bins.
But… that’s not the focus of this episode’s playlist. We’re here today to celebrate the party rocking funk jams that they rocked over as well, the get on the dance floor and get to sweating type of songs that Prince Paul reminded us to have in our crates or on our mix-tapes to get the party live.
The Prince Paul Era
We pulled the tracks for these playlists from De La’s first three albums: 3 Feet High and Rising, De La Soul is Dead (as well as related singles and features). That legendary 3 album run captured their early sound shaped by producer Prince Paul, whose creative, layered approach to sampling helped redefine hip-hop production. We focused on these 3 albums because, well, if we tried to dive further into their extensive catalog we would need to make a dozen playlists (and stay tuned, we probably will!).
Thanks for loving music and celebrating these amazing artists with us! Click the links to grab the Spotify Playlists (the first playlist features the sampled funk songs, the second mixes in some of our favorite De La songs from those 3 albums) and visit our Spotify Profile for more Overshine curated playlists.
More De La Soul:
After way too many years of litigation, De La Soul’s back catalog is finally available to stream, check them out on Spotify Here.
De La performed “Eye Know” on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert in celebration of the 35th(!) anniversary of the release of 3 Feet High and Rising. It’s great! Check it out Here.
Extra bonus De La sampled dance floor fillers that are not available on Spotify but we couldn’t stand to leave out:
The Whatnauts – Help is on the Way
Funkadelic – Knee Deep
