Uncut: De La Soul talk about women in the industry, fans and their new album
by Julia Laricheva

The De La Soul style has always been both positive and humorous. Rejecting "music industry standards," they avoid choreographed dance routines, images of scantily clad women and obscene displays of wealth or violence. From the early "Me, Myself and I" to the current "It ain't all good," they are occupied with befriending the viewer, not dazzling them. We thought it would be interesting to interview De La Soul and asked them questions about women.

The interview took place at Mount Holyoke, a woman's college in Massachusetts, while they were on tour promoting their new album "Bionix." Dave (aka Dave Jolicoeur, 31) and Posdnuos (aka Kelvin Mercer, 30) did the interview while Maseo (aka Vincent Mason, 30) set up for the show. Here I was sitting down with the legendary De La Sol and they were just as down to earth as you'd imagine them to be. They didn't rush our time and they laughed at my jokes.

Pos had a calm demeanor and his words were methodical. Everything about him was on point. The pre-concert energy must have channeled into his leg because it kept on jittering during the whole interview. I noticed that Pos took the role of the businessman, while Dave acted like the PR rep. Dave loves to talk. He was quick to smile and did not hesitate to throw in a few one-liners. The following article is only a selected portion; the complete interview will be published in the March 2002 issue of Artsy where De la Soul talks about how they got started, the special women in their lives and they also share a crazy groupie story. For more information about the band, their website can be found at www.tommyboy.com.

Julia: Currently rap and hip hop videos are depicting "booty." In this case, "booty" means both wealth and a woman's posterior. As hip hop artists, your videos have never been about the displays of hmmm... assets. What do you think about music videos that show women jiggling in G-strings?

Dave: Well... just being a man you see videos with the ladies and their bikinis and just being a man it's like "wow, it looks good". But um..I think there's more to it. When we think about music production, directing videos, stage shows or album covers -for us it's all an art form.
We want it to be more than the norm. It seems that the norm is just to have women in your videos surrounding you. For us it's cool, but on the same note I think there's more to it than that. We actually have a song on our new album "Bionics" entitled "Baby Phat". It talks about a lot of the women who are left out of the videos. The ladies that support hip hop and buy our records, who don't get their fair share of acknowledgement. It's really directed to the women who are a little overweight, who wouldn't get the spot in the video. It's just a record showing love and saying that we did not forget you. For us, videos are an art form and if we are going to address women in anyway, let's show them some love, let's definitely respect them.

Pos: A lot of times it comes down to artists doing videos and many new people coming on. The newcomers are fans of hip hop and fans of whatever the pop culture has shown them. They feel like when they get on, they're going to do what "hip" is doing. What man doesn't want to be surrounded by beautiful women all the time? They know that when the cameras are turned off, half the time that is not real for them. As Dave was saying, we love women, we love to try to put across a whole other feel for when we do our visuals. It's very easy to do "norm" videos . It's easier to say "ok, that's a great song. Let's have you sing your verses with a bunch of women next to you". Opposed to spending time thinking of an incredible concept.

Julia: Speaking of concepts, the "It ain't all good" video depicted De La Soul working at the car wash. The video idea was great. It had music icons working blue-collar jobs. It made it real; you weren't putting yourselves up on a pedestal. Chaka Khan added her vocals on the track and made it a very addictive song. Are there any other women that you are interested in working with?

Pos: We made an attempt to work with Jill Scott on this album but unfortunately that did work out.

Dave: Sade dissed us too.

Pos: Right, we tried to do something with Sade and even Mary J. Blige on the last album and you know...

Dave: She dissed us.

Pos: But for some reason it didn't work out. Chaka Khan was just basically a blessing. And when that happened, that made up for a lot of the lost opportunity. Talent is talent. Whether it's a woman or a man or what have you. We definitely love to turn and see what type of talent as far as ladies are concerned we can get on the album. We actually have a young lady on our new record by the name of "Yummy". She did two songs. We try to implement whatever sounds good.

Julia: Is she on a label?

Pos: She is about to be on Arista. She's in a group called Rain. She did a song called "Turn it up" for the Osmosis Jones soundtrack. She's eighteen years old.

Dave: She is an incredible talent.

Julia: I know that Commom is Muslim, and so is Mos Def. Are any of you? What do you think about the current state of US?

Pos: We're all, especially myself and Dave, have definitely studied, practiced- where especially I am just more into trying to be positive and living my life in the right way. Not just coming in and promote something that's a lot of open gaps. As far as Muslim, as far as what I've always known it to be, referring to peaceful ways and being one of peace. I would consider myself Muslim. Try to be peaceful and try to do things of that sort.

Julia: I think that this war is a Gary Conditt conspiracy. He is trying to distract the public from the Chandra Levy case. So can you tell us bit about your new album?

Dave: We just completed our new album titled "Bionix." It features about fifteen tracks; we have the greats of hip hop like Slick Rick on the record. We have B-Real of Cypress Hill, Yummy (E. Yummy Bingham), Devon the Dude (he appeared on Dr. Dre's record a while back), Glen Louis, he's on the album. It just features up and coming people from our circle who we are trying to introduce to the world. It's a great album; it's part two of a three part series. It'll be released December 4th. The single off that album is called "Back off."