A small plea
Planetarium, as is well known, is not shy about going on the record (repeatedly) to express our disappoint with De La Soul's 2002 album Bionix. It's the sound of a group treading water, content in their reinvention from the previous outing Mosaic Thump, the first of the still-unfinished Art Official Intelligence trilogy. It was sad for us true fans to behold such a sight with a group that had, previously, never been content with ANYthing. De La Soul repeatedly pushed hip-hop forward, so to watch their musical boulder roll back down the hill, so to speak, was disheartening.
But now comes news that their third and final installment is due out in the next month, so here's a fervent hope that they got bored with being the Kings of the Hill, and decided to scale a new one. On that otherwise misspent last record, there were two tracks that hinted at the greatness that lay untapped. "Held Down", featuring Cee-Lo, provided a glimpse of the kind of things De La should be tackling- the concerns of people who look around and realize that, at some point, the lights come on and the party ends. It's a beautiful, haunting track, perhaps hitting its zenith when beatmaker Posdnous describes his young daughter looking at the TV during the ethnic cleansings of the turn of the century, and when she asks "why those people were lyin' on the floor, covered in red/ I tell her they went looking for God, and found religion instead."
The closer, "Trying People", is equally powerful, as though the group discovered that they have something to say before the album ends, frantically attempting to cram in the statements that carry the most weight, the grooves with the most pull. If they choose this path for the new one, things could be very good, indeed. Here's hoping for the bullies to find their pulpit.