De La Soul famously took a long time to get their early albums on streaming services, but they’re making it worth the wait.
To celebrate the 35th anniversary of their debut album 3 Feet High and Rising, the group put out a special 35th anniversary edition of the project on Friday (March 1).
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Included were two “home demos” billed by the group as being previously unreleased, recorded in group member Maseo’s basement.
You can listen to the home demos of “Plug Tunin'” and “Freedom of Speak” below.
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.
De La Soul’s first six albums — 3 Feet High and Rising, De La Soul Is Dead, Buhloone Mindstate, Stakes Is High, Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump and AOI: Bionix — debuted on streaming services just about a year ago, on March 3, 2023.
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Several months later, the group’s Posdnous shared a different demo than the ones released on Friday.
On July 2 of last year, the New York MC took to Instagram to share a snippet of a demo recording for the 27-year anniversary of Stakes Is High. In the video, Pos points the camera to a cassette tape of the album as an unreleased cut of its title track plays in the background.
This is a version of the song that was made before the late, great J Dilla was brought on to work on it. It features a sample of The Heath Brothers “Smilin Billy Suite,” popularized in Nas’s “One Love.”
He captioned the clip: “27 years ago 3 Long Island men gave you the Stakes is High and every one of those 27 years @wearedelasoul have been blessed with listeners letting us know what this album means to their lives.”
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He added: “Thank you ! Thank you Jay Dee for ‘Dilla-nizing’ our original version of the title track to make it into a Hip Hop sermon! #delasoul #thankyoudave #dilla #stakesishigh #27 #demo”
