De La Soul are continuing to celebrate the 35th anniversary of their debut album — this time, by cooking up with Prince Paul on late night TV.
The two surviving members of the group, Posdnuos and Maseo, teamed up with Paul — who produced their 1989 debut 3 Feet High and Rising — on Thursday (March 7) for a special performance on The Late Show with Steven Colbert.
AD LOADING...
The trio’s version of “Eye Know” centered around a kitchen theme, with Pos, Mase and Paul “cooking” up the song by adding ingredients to a pot: a beet for the song’s drumbeat; a small wooden peg to introduce the track’s sample of Steely Dan’s “Peg”; a toy whistle as the song’s whistling sample from “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” came in; and so on.
Then Posdnuous rapped two of the song’s verses: one from him and one originally done by the group’s third member Trugoy The Dove, who died in 2023.
AD LOADING...
A post on The Late Show‘s Instagram called the performance “delightfully delicious.”
Watch it below.
The creative late night performance isn’t the only way De La Soul is commemorating the anniversary of 3 Feet High and Rising.
The group put out a special 35th anniversary edition of the project last week. Included were two “home demos” billed by the group as being previously unreleased, recorded in group member Maseo’s basement.
AD LOADING...
The new edition of the record comes with four other bonus tracks: “Freedom of Speak (We Got Three Minutes),” “Ain’t Hip to be Labelled a Hippie,” “What’s More,” and “Jenifa Taught Me (12” Version).” All are newly released digitally.
In addition, De La started a new radio show on Apple Music.
Art Official Intelligence Radio with De La Soul, a special five-episode series, began earlier this week.
On the debut episode with guest Queen Latifah, the duo talked about nearly being involved with The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, the sitcom that ran from 1990 to 1996 and established Will Smith as a Hollywood star.
AD LOADING...
Posdnuos said: “A lot of people don’t know, yo, the Fresh Prince thing was offered to us.”
He added: “They want us to do this? Russell [Simmons] was like, ‘Yo, y’all need to try out. Go out there.’ We was like, ‘Nah. We do rap and stuff.’ Honestly, we were scared. Seriously, we were scared.”
“And shit, I could have been Will Smith. I could have got married to Jada. Damn,” he joked.
