Giving us perhaps the sweetest Valentine's Day present of all this year, Native Tongues rap vets De La Soul have announced that they'll be offering up the entirety of their back catalogue to download for free for 25 hours, starting tomorrow (February 14).
The gracious reveal was made by the band today (February 13), with the back catalogue going up for grabs on their website at 11 a.m. EST until noon the next day. The move comes just ahead of the 25th anniversary of the outfit's landmark 1989 release 3 Feet High and Rising.
"It's about allowing our fans who have been looking and trying to get a hold of our music to have access to it," De La Soul member Posdnuos told Rolling Stone. "It's been too long where our fans haven't had access to everything. This is our way of showing them how much we love them."
Though the details on what goes up for download are vague, presumably it will include all the LPs between 3 Feet High and Rising and their last proper long-player, 2004's The Grind Date. We'll have to wait and see if singles and B-sides or affiliated albums like Pos and Dave's First Serve collaboration with French DJ's Chokolate and Khalid will be part of the band's big gift.
Following the back catalogue push, De La Soul will be issuing some new material. Next month, they'll deliver the six-song Preemium Soul on the Rocks EP, which splits production duties evenly between DJ Premier and Pete Rock. Also on the way is a De La Soul song using a previously unused beat from the late J Dilla.
"Dilla was the Tupac of producers," Posdnuos said. "He has so many unreleased things that no one has heard. His family knows how vital and important an ingredient his music was to our work."
While De La Soul's long-in-the-works You're Welcome was originally scheduled to arrive in 2013, the album is still in production. Pos noted that the record is still "coming along amazingly," but explained that they've been highly critical on what they're producing.
"We have tons of music, but we're our own worst critics," he explained. "Certain groups have too many 'yes men.' In our group, we have too many 'no men.' When we look back on some of the stuff we have, we're like, 'Yo, we need to just put this out.' The album is still called You're Welcome, but we also have this whole other album that we're working on that…Wooo, I wish I could talk about it."
The gracious reveal was made by the band today (February 13), with the back catalogue going up for grabs on their website at 11 a.m. EST until noon the next day. The move comes just ahead of the 25th anniversary of the outfit's landmark 1989 release 3 Feet High and Rising.
"It's about allowing our fans who have been looking and trying to get a hold of our music to have access to it," De La Soul member Posdnuos told Rolling Stone. "It's been too long where our fans haven't had access to everything. This is our way of showing them how much we love them."
Though the details on what goes up for download are vague, presumably it will include all the LPs between 3 Feet High and Rising and their last proper long-player, 2004's The Grind Date. We'll have to wait and see if singles and B-sides or affiliated albums like Pos and Dave's First Serve collaboration with French DJ's Chokolate and Khalid will be part of the band's big gift.
Following the back catalogue push, De La Soul will be issuing some new material. Next month, they'll deliver the six-song Preemium Soul on the Rocks EP, which splits production duties evenly between DJ Premier and Pete Rock. Also on the way is a De La Soul song using a previously unused beat from the late J Dilla.
"Dilla was the Tupac of producers," Posdnuos said. "He has so many unreleased things that no one has heard. His family knows how vital and important an ingredient his music was to our work."
While De La Soul's long-in-the-works You're Welcome was originally scheduled to arrive in 2013, the album is still in production. Pos noted that the record is still "coming along amazingly," but explained that they've been highly critical on what they're producing.
"We have tons of music, but we're our own worst critics," he explained. "Certain groups have too many 'yes men.' In our group, we have too many 'no men.' When we look back on some of the stuff we have, we're like, 'Yo, we need to just put this out.' The album is still called You're Welcome, but we also have this whole other album that we're working on that…Wooo, I wish I could talk about it."
