Buzz’s Jason Machlab knows that De La Soul are one of the most inventive and game-changing rap groups since the genre was minted, and ahead of a show in Cardiff’s Tramshed for the 3 Feet High And Rising hitmakers, he had the opportunity to chat to MC Kelvin Mercer, better known as Pos.

When De La Soul first came about you were part of the Native Tongues collective and preached the ‘D.A.I.S.Y age’, both based in positivity. Why was that important?

It wasn’t a mission statement for us, it really was a part of who we naturally were. There are a lot of other rappers, say Big Daddy Kane, who were ‘conscious’, and definitely known lyrically for their amazing skills. These are the same OGs to us that when we met them were beyond just intelligent: worldly, understanding of love, all that. But then the way they chose to use their creative craft was by going into a certain box.

It was just the same for us. We loved Kool G Rap, Rakim, N.W.A – but the way we just had fun and wanted to present ourselves, we saw nothing holding us back. Even knowing someone as dope as Prince Paul [producer of De La Soul’s first three albums], who lived right in the neighbourhood – he was always a really good person and positive, and it never took away from his skill.

I’m just trying to say we never sat down and said “Hey guys, let’s make sure we have fun!” We were just those types of people to begin with – like-minded people who allowed each other to feel comfortable in a room.

“There’s always room for any form of communicating – through words, or words with rhythm and drums.”

Pos, De La Soul

Considering all the darkness in the world right now, would you say that there’s room for that ‘D.A.I.S.Y’ age positivity mindset today?

There definitely is. There’s always room for any form of communicating, whether it’s just communication through words or words with rhythm and drums. There’s definitely room for that. The go-to is people like Kendrick [Lamar] who step out of the normal conforms of where rap is today, and even being a kid from Compton he can still speak on a different viewpoint of things as well as the darkness inside it.

That’s how it was for us as well, being very much the purveyors of Three Feet High & Rising but at the same time being stopped by the cops for our skin colour and all that. There’s definitely room for it and there needs to be a lot more of it, honestly.

Those early albums have famously never been available to stream for a number of reasons, and I know you’ve been trying to sort it out. Has there been any more word on the progress?

Quite honestly it’s been sorted out! We now are in control of all of our music. The original owners of Tommy Boy [De La’s label until it folded in 2002] have since sold off the entire company, and the new owners who acquired the company were willing to work with us and everything was sorted!

At the moment, we’re just preparing everything and getting the marketing behind it all ready. The music will definitely be up and is controlled by De La Soul. It’s been a long journey and battle, but we have access to the music now and we’ll definitely be giving it to the public.

Do you ever feel like you missed out on certain opportunities or royalties because of the lack of an online presence of those early iconic albums, especially compared to peers like A Tribe Called Quest?

Well, definitely. None of those albums has ever been in the download era, let alone the streaming era. One hundred per cent. There’s a whole generation who didn’t catch us, so there’s gonna be a generation of kids who could be fully immersed in knowing who Tribe is and adjacent from them, maybe knowing a little about us: maybe “These guys are down with Gorillaz!”

That classic material didn’t sit in the lives of a lot of different people, but we’re still thankful because it never stopped us from being able to move around and tour or put out albums like Grind Date or Anonymous Nobody [from 2004 and 2016 respectively], working with so many different people. We were still able to make great money, but definitely, now it’ll be a complete package with our classic catalogue being available.

You mentioned … And The Anonymous Nobody, which I still think of as the new album even though it came out in 2016. Are you still thinking creatively about De La Soul? Is there more to come?

Yeah! We’re constantly working on music as a whole, and even as individuals. I’m always asked to feature on things, as well as Dave [Pos’ fellow MC, who originally went by Trugoy in De La]. We did a song with DJ Shadow [Rocket Fuel, from 2019]. There are things like that coming out.

We definitely have an album that’s been on the books for a minute that we’ve just been trying to find the time for creatively with Pete Rock and [DJ] Premier to get finished, the Premium Soul On The Rocks record where they’re doing the entire production. Our older catalogue and negotiations and all that kinda just took front and centre, but now that that’s been worked out we’re back to working with Premier and getting with Pete Rock to get that album done. There are definitely projects to come and we’re definitely fuelled by the world, and inspired to always continually make music.

…Anonymous Nobody was really varied, stylistically and guest artist-wise – probably more so than anything you’d done before. It almost felt experimental at times. Is that the path for future De La Soul-named projects?

Well, it just depends where we are. That project just took a natural turn that way, because we were working on a more, say, ‘conventional’ sampled album that we had been letting people know about, which was gonna be entitled You’re Welcome. Then we just started playing around a little bit with the live band we had been touring with. We’d already been catching a vibe together live, and then that project just took on a life of its own! Like, wow. It just took centre-stage. Months and months of just jamming, and then we went and took that source material and sampled it.

It was just a lot of fun, man. It went in a lot of different places, and David Byrne was actually the first feature that we locked in! We had so much material that we had to kind of pick a bunch of it and say, “let’s focus on this,” and one of the things we chose to put to the side the band had hoped for us to rhyme on. We were like, “Yo, this doesn’t feel like something that we would rhyme on, it sounds like a Talking Heads record!” and then a lightbulb went off and we were like “Why don’t we see if David Byrne will sing on this? Then we’ll add another portion to it to rhyme on it.”

And he immediately did it! So he was kinda like the base for everything, cos we were like, “shit, if we can get David Byrne, it shouldn’t be a problem getting this person!” It was a lot of fun.

De La Soul, Tramshed, Cardiff, Sat 19 Mar. Tickets: £30.50. Info: here

words JASON MACHLAB