Before De La Soul, says Hank Shocklee, "'beautiful' and 'rap' weren't two words that went together."
Shocklee would know: As a founding member of Public Enemy's production team, the Bomb Squad, he's as responsible as anyone for shaping the blaring, dissonant, pugnacious sound of hip-hop in the mid- to late-1980s, when the music "was almost like a football game — just smacking you upside the head," as the producer puts it.
Yet less than a year after Public Enemy released the pummeling "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back" — and N.W.A the furious "Straight Outta Compton" — the three middle-class misfits of Long Island's De La Soul dropped 1989's "3 Feet High and Rising," a lush and whimsical debut that "wasn't abrasive or agitated or in your face," Shocklee says. Intricately assembled by De La Soul and their producer, Prince Paul, from dozens of samples of far-flung tracks by the likes of Steely Dan, Liberace and Hall & Oates, the LP showcased a more playful and melodic idea of hip-hop, with the rappers musing on identity and friendship and lust in a coded language over welcoming, lightly psychedelic grooves riddled with hooks.
