In a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine to commemorate the 20-year anniversary of the release of 3 Feet High and Rising, De La Soul revealed some special anecdotes through a track-by-track review of the album.
On “Ghetto Thang”:
“The original title for ‘Ghetto Thang’ was ‘Soft Violins,’ because we were playing with the violin sound on the keyboard. It was just once again, one of the routines we were trying to come up with in the house. By the time we were with Tommy Boy we were able to give it a better beat, give it a better keyboard, and it wound up becoming a song that talked about things that happen in the ghettos of America.” – Posdnous
On “Take It Off”:
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“That was another one of those moments where there were 25 people in the studio. There was a song out there at the time called ‘Kick the Ball’ and it used the same Headhunters beat, so we basically mimicked the sound of their single and, instead of saying ‘kick the ball,’ we said ‘take it off’ and thought about all the cliché Hip Hop stuff that people should just change and find some individualism or some of their own personality, as opposed to falling in line with what Hip Hop was supposed to be. It was something we felt strongly about. We felt like there shouldn’t have been guidelines for Hip Hop.” – Trugoy
On “Me Myself and I”:
“Originally, it was us trying to make sure we’re saying we’re not hippies. We were just being ourselves. People are now taking the song to be, ‘OK, it’s cool to be me and I don’t have to be hard’ — it wasn’t really about saying that, even though the video came off like that.” – Trugoy
The group also discussed preliminary plans to re-do several of the original tracks. “We’ve been in conversations with Warner Bros. to explore re-recording some of the songs with some of the people we sampled from,” said Mase.
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In other news, gearing up for the June 9th release of their fifth studio album The E.N.D., the Black Eyed Peas have partnered with retail store Torrid to give fans a sneak peek of their new disc.
This Saturday, from 3-6 p.m., Torrid stores will be playing the new album. Fans of BEP can also enter to win a prize package that includes round-trip airfare and two tickets to one of their shows. People can enter at participating Torrid stores, or online at shockhound.com.
Finally, Oakland rapper Yukmouth has plans to release his fifth album The West Coast Don on July 14th. The second album to be released on his own Smoke-A-Lot Records, Yukmouth has recruited a long list of features Including T-Pain, Crooked I, Glasses Malone and Keak Da Sneak. The albums first single, “I’m a Gangsta,” [click to listen] has recently hit radio stations.
