Editor’s Note: I listened to De La Soul’s 5th and 6th albums, Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump and AOI: Bionix. I’ve explained about the streaming already, my thoughts/impressions.
I’ll say again, I just list the songs I like the best. No Pitchfork pseudo-analysis.
Track 4: “Oooh. (feat. Redman)” Nice laid back with solid sampling. And who doesn’t love Redman? Personal story, we have a stray male orange tabby cat that we feed and we named him Redman. He looks likes he’s constantly faded, lol, he’s the best.
Track 5: “Thru Ya City (feat. D.V. Alias Krist)” This is in the film Made, when Puffy and his crew come to pick up Favreau and Vaugh and they have to ride on the back of some of Puff Daddy’s black motor cycle crew. Vaughn is on the back of a muscle bound, shirtless, black dude’s motorcycle and is totally offended. Just a hilarious movie if you’ve never seen it. Nice laid back song, De La Soul does these types of songs effortlessly it seems like.
Track 7: “View” Nice jazzy piano sample and jazz sounding drums.
Track 8: “Interluden” 23 second instrumental. I like it.
Track 9: “Set The Mood (feat. Indeed)” and Phife Dawg makes an appearance on the outro. Another nice head bobber. They are settling into a more relaxed feel on this album after an inauspicious start.
Track 11: “Declaration” Love the sample here.
Track 16: “Foolin'” Nice laid back groove. The only types of songs that have worked for me on this album so far really. Nice track.
This album is just a bit off. There’s some good stuff here but easily their weakest album to date. They tried to once again change it up but I think some of the early album tried to go Outkast-lite and just doesn’t work. They also try a bit more of an R&B influence and songs like “With Me” and “Copa (Cabanga)” are ok, but again just miss the mark. Where’s the humor? Don’t blame them for again, trying to switch things up a bit, but a mis-fire. I gotta call balls and strikes like I, cough, hear them. The Allmusic review below is fairly correct I think, minus the hate for De La Soul Is Dead! What is wrong with people? They need to re-listen to that album, a stone cold masterpiece.
Track 2: “Bionix” Some of the old magic here. Great first song.
Track 3: “Baby Phat (feat. Devin the Dude & Elizabeth “Yummy” Bingham)” Ode to the slump busters. Production wise a nice mash-up, they were trying something like this on the last album and it didn’t work, it does here.
Track 5: “Simply Havin'” Short but great.
Track 6: “Held Down (feat. Cee-Lo)” Wasn’t sure this collaboration would work, but it really does!
Track 7: “Reverend Do Good #1” A funny and poignant skit. “Heard a young man this morning coming in singing H to the Izzo, but here in church, you got to give up the dizzough”
Track 8: “Watch Out (feat. Jose ‘Perico’ Hernandez)” They successfully incorporated a gospel vibe on Held Down now do a great job with a Latin vibe on this song. Possible 5 star? Gotta re-listen to confirm.
Track 10: “Reverend Do Good #2” Fucking lolololol
Track 16: “Peer Pressure (feat. B-Real)” Great beat and another collaboration that just really works, which I was initially skeptical about.
Track 18: “Trying People” Great ending, beautiful production.
A huge improvement over their 5th album, but pretty clearly their 5th best album out of the first 6. A really fast start, and good finish but just really lags in the middle. I’m not really surprised they didn’t finish the last album (this was supposed to be a 3 part trilogy of albums, this was the second). I think Allmusic is a bit too bullish here, but again, some good music and better than their previous outing.
Just a knockout first 4 albums. Glad, I attempted this under-taking and listened to all of these albums and that they are finally available for the public to stream.