The Hip-Hop world lost a pioneer and an important voice of the culture as David Jolicoeur, also known as Trugoy the Dove, one-third of the classic group De La Soul, has passed away, aged 54. De La Soul was in a lane of their own in Hip-Hop. One of the best groups ever, with easily the most consistent catalog ever. In a culture of so much cool, they made it cool to be a bit nerdy. They did it so effortlessly. It’s so hard that Dave is no longer with us, but he will forever be in the fabric of Hip-Hop.
What’s unique to Hip-Hop is when someone passes away, not only do you mourn that person’s loss, but you feel the grieve from the entire community. In a way, that’s make it a little bit easier to cope with it.
One of the biggest stories in Hip-Hop as of late is that De La Soul’s entire catalog would be hitting all streaming services on March 3rd, after a long battle of retaining the rights from Tommy Boy Records. That’s important because De La Soul’s music has not been available for stream or purchase to the new generations of Hip-Hop fans and this acted as a form of erasure to arguably the greatest Hip-Hop group of all time. You can pre-order everything digital as well as some titles physically at wearedelasoul.com.
De La Soul had an incredible discography, but let’s end this post with one of their most beautiful songs “Trying People” from AOI: Bionix.