11. De La Soul3 Feet High And Rising
Again another incredibly strong image but the music was fantastic too, really exciting and new. Late 80s hip hop was for the most part mired down in misogyny and bluster – Ice-T, Boogie Down Productions, Big Daddy Kane – I liked the music but I couldn’t buy into that attitude. I was pretty much bought up by just my mum and I thought it was a bit off; I didn’t like it. But De La Soul were anti all that and brought people like Queen Latifah to the fore. They were sampling their parents’ records, those lovely old soul records that got a new lease of life and I liked their attitude and the way they were trying to do something else with hip hop. There was a shop in Southend called the Africa Shop and they sold those African medallions, and had done so for years, and then all of a sudden white middle class kids were wearing them. If you think about that for a minute it was really quite mad. Did I ever rap? No, that would’ve been totally wrong – ‘Daydreamer’ is the closest I’ve got to rapping!
