Pop music in general, and hip hop in particular, is a medium which does not generally respect its elder statesmen. This is not all bad: for example, David Lee Roth circa 2004 is certainly not a man to be admired, and the Rolling Stones have straight-up sucked for 25 years. Still, pop fans' obsession with the "next fill-in-artist's-name" tends to marginalize acts that are still both active and relevant, years after their supposed primes. This is true for De La Soul, and by the sounds of things, they have something to say to all the kids out there.
Although The Grind Date begins, like almost all hip-hop records, with a thoroughly forgettable introduction track (which I personally consider to be the most annoying cliché in a genre full of them), De La Soul have no time to waste, and the 11 songs that make up the rest of the album offer little filler to the listener. There are no skits, no prolonged shout-outs to the crew, no guest spots by sub-par emcees. Even the unnecessary appearance by Spike Lee is hurried along on the way from the stellar title track to the exceptional "Church." Instead, The Grind Date follows in the recent footsteps of the Roots' The Tipping Point by just focusing on releasing a hip-hop album that doesn't include six to ten tracks that one skips on the way to a specific song or two. As Pos says: "No more whack albums with two joints/ no more ball-playing raps; just shoot your two points."
Track-for-track, the production on this album is the best of the year-to-date: rather than settle for mediocre tracks from du jour producers such as Kanye or the Neptunes, De La Soul still count on Pasemaster Mase, with a little help from J-Dilla and Madlib, and with good reason. From the Yes sample in the title track to the sinister hook of "Rock Co.Kane Flow," there is no track on this album that doesn't get one's head bobbing. As for the rhymes, Pos and Dave still feature the old-school deliveries that have carried them through for 16 years in an industry where the shelf-life tends to be much shorter, but are now more bitter than ever before, fed up with the clichés that fuel the music they love and less-than-amiable as regards their split from Tommy Boy.
There are brief moments on the album where their flow is less than stellar, or too focused on chastising other emcees, but the Plugs still spit better than many of the young emcees that outsell them. The weaker moments are relieved by some of the hottest guest performances on any album this year. Ghostface tears up his verse on "He Comes," Common is exceptional on "Days of Our Lives," and my beloved MF Doom spits bullets on the aforementioned "Rock Co.Kane Flow." Thus, when all is said and done, the now grumpy old men of hip hop have released a great hip-hop album, an accomplishment that whipper-snappers in both hip-hop and the pop-music world at large would benefit from attempting to emulate.
1. The Future
2. Verbal Clap
3. Much More
4. Shopping Bags (She Got from You)
5. The Grind Date
6. Church
7. It's Like That
8. He Comes
9. Days of Our Lives
10. Come on Down
11. No. Davis
12. Rock Co.Kane Flow
More about: De La Soul
