Buhloone Mindstate is my favorite De La Record

I’ve been spending a lot of time with the De La Soul catalog since it became available on streaming in early March. I have only ever had two favorite De La records, Buhloone Mindstate and Stakes is High. Why not Three Feet High and Rising? I came late to that one. It never got the spins. Why not De La Soul is Dead? That was my brother’s record. I didn’t quite get it. I never fell in with the skits, I think I wasn’t ready for the artistry when I first tried it. By the time I came back to it, I was already in love with Buhloone Mindstate. When Stakes is High came out I was ready to give away Buhloone Mindstate. I was 100% in with Stakes is High when it came out. Stakes is High is arguably the greatest hip-hop song of all time, it’s for sure on my list, might be number one. The Bizness with Common is everything I want in a hip-hop song. I remember listening to KMOJ in high school while driving in Bill Caperton’s Ford Tempo and that song coming on and I’m hard pressed to remember a better feeling to Bill cranking up the volume and driving down Summit Ave. I mean it was great when my daughters were born, but have you heard the song “The Bizness” cut up on a legendary station, presumably by a legendary DJ like Brother Jules?? Let’s listen.

But Stakes is High is 68 minutes. Buhloone Mindstate is 48 minutes and those 20 minutes matter. There’s some meandering, there’s some mini-duds. There’s a couple major key synth jams that kind of blend together. It’s still incredible, it’s a joy to listen to. But Buhloone Mindstate has incredible pacing, even though there are fewer standalone gems to help it keep pace. This is one of those records where the sum is so good, you even love it in parts. It is also a record where Maseo, the DJ for De La, makes more of a difference. He works in cuts in masterful and pertinent ways. Also, the Buhloone Mindstate breathes, to me it’s a wildly organic sounding record. There’s a couple live musicians on it, shout out to Maceo Parker, Bill Stewart and Larry Goldings on this one. Two weird things about this album: I can’t tell you why but it seems like Trugoy talks A SHIT TON about Chatanooga. He calls himself the Chatanooga champ. I don’t know if he has some connection to that city or area that I don’t know about. Also, it seems that Posdnous talks all the time on the album about wearing a condom, about regretting not wearing a condom. There’s no songs where that is front and center but if he doesn’t work that shit into like 25% of the songs.

As you know, this website is very popular, you are on a popular blog. I’m writing about De La Soul because I think more people should listen to De La Soul. There is something so ARTISINAL about De La Soul. Everything sounds so. . .crafted. I love modern hip-hop, love it love it love it, but I’m not always hearing that craft hellbent on telling a story of collage. Collage of samples but also of voices, of references, of sonics. I always love that the Native Tongues would go to the trouble of getting someone from another crew to show up on a song just for a hook. It’s a lot of work to get someone in to the studio and not even deliver a verse. But to me it’s this proof that there was a willingness to seek out a distinct sonic edge for any single millisecond of the album. There’s a priority to bringing in the perfect voice, perfect snare hit, perfect scratch and budgets, sample clearances and engineer sanity be damned.

Go listen to De La Soul. Start with Buhloone Mindstate and tell me what you think.