De La Soul - O2 Academy Bristol 07/05/14

08 May 2014, 14:59 | Written by Matt Tomiak

(Live)

(De La Soul)

A quarter of a century on, it’s worth remembering just how far removed from the angry, provocative US hip-hop zeitgeist De La Soul’s 3 Feet High & Rising was upon release in March 1989. It arrived in the same year as both Public Enemy’s incendiary call-to-arms “Fight the Power” and the X-rated 2 Live Crew’s notorious censor-baiting antics. Less than 12 months had passed since NWA’s bleak, brutal gangsta rap landmark Straight Outta Compton. Yet 3 Feet High & Rising was an altogether different beast; a playful, good-natured hour of bright, breezy optimism, replete with a vibrant sleeve and a goofy game show theme created by a trio of suburban New York school pals. It couldn’t really have been more different from the confrontational sounds and imagery working Middle America (and eventually fretful Washington politicos via the Parents Music Resource Center) into a frenzy at the time. 3FH&R topped the charts in De La Soul’s homeland, and remains their most esteemed work.

All original members -Kelvin Mercer, Vincent Mason and Dave Jolicoeur - are in the UK to mark the Silver Jubilee of their landmark debut album, which was based around a reasoned new idealism inspired by the global upheaval that marked the end of the nineteen eighties. De La Soul themselves described it as the ‘D.A.I.S.Y. AGE’ - 1989 was, after all, referred to by Time magazine as “The Year That Changed The World.” Their LP blended playful samples, jokey non-sequiturs and a relentlessly upbeat vibe, as epitomized on signature tune “The Magic Number” and it’s positive sloganeering: “Three forms the soul to a positive sum.”

Although the collective are on occasion serious, earnestly thanking the crowd for their support and dedicating songs to their late erstwhile collaborator J Dilla, the threesome’s breezy, sometimes profane humour remains as key to their performance here as it was to the atmosphere on record. “It looks like there’s a lot of people who haven’t partied like this in 25 years” grins DJ Mason after spinning fellow travellers A Tribe Called Quest’s “Can I Kick It?” to set the mood before his band mates take to the stage. “It’s rammed in here! Who’s playing tonight…? Wu- Tang?!” jests Mercer later. There’s a profusion of audience call-and-responses and shout-outs to the crowd broken down by age demographics (yep, there are plenty in the ’40 and over’ bracket in attendance tonight) before self-affirmation anthem “Me Myself and I”.

An inevitable encore of “The Magic Number” has the venue bouncing, the good vibrations literally shaking the foundations, the family-friendly practitioners of the genre having lost none of their charming effervescence in the intervening years.