De La Soul - and the Anonymous Nobody...

De La Soul
and the Anonymous Nobody...
2016
Spotify

Over 600k was raised in the Kickstarter campaign for De La Soul's ninth studio album. It has been four years since their last release and if this album is any indication the New York trio seem to be taking a backseat on their own album instead allowing features to take center stage. You will only find De La Soul solo rapping on five tracks, though they produced the whole record. "Pain" has a decidedly old school, very old school vibe and Snoop Dogg is clearly the star of the track. This choice leads to an album that is very bright in certain spots but then incredibly slow and boring in others. Each track almost exists on its own, hell each chorus and verse seems to have it's own distinct place in the record. This makes for an album that is very disjointed as a unit even if some of it's parts are successful. As much of the aged hip hop world De La Soul is very aware of the issues facing Black America today, and it colors the whole record. The problem is what they are saying is not particuarly interesting or engaging. Anohni's record HOPELESSNESS was so good because it stood for something and made that very clear. De La Soul however sort of just toy with issues for a moment then move on to a love song like "Memory of...". The focus is lacking a great deal on this album and that is not something you expect from a group that have been doing this for almost 30 years.

A song like "Lord Intended" which is weird from the jump gets even weirder with the inclusion of Justin Hawkins (The Darkness) singing in the worst voice I have ever heard come out of his mouth until the very end when he actually starts trying. The end of the song literally sounds just like a Darkness song and sticks out like a sore thumb. The track featuring David Byrne "Snoopies" is almost less weird which is simply baffling. With a features list reading like the who's who of music most of that $600,000.00 had to go towards fees for the artists, perhaps not where fans though their cash would go. That really is the issue with crowd funding artistic endeavors, there is this added pressure that instead of putting your full voice out you have to please people. It takes someone with balls the size of a planet to tell people "donate to my art project, and I'm not necessarily going to make something you like". An hour and seven minutes is also far to long for this record. The longer tracks drag on and on, not really changing much and becoming a chore to listen to. The end of a song like "Greyhounds" is so well developed, so rich and Usher probably gives one of his best performances of the year, but it takes damn near four minutes before we get to the real meat of the song, and tacked on to the ending are these city sounds that serve zero purpose. It is another example of De La Soul taking themselves way to seriously on this record. and the Anonymous Nobody... with all it's scattershot tracks has flashes of brillance but it takes a real deep dive to get there, a journey most people won't be willing to take.

6.6 out of 10