De La Soul "Get Away": new song sounds great. (AUDIO)

De La Soul Is Back and Sounds Great

De La Soul Is Back and Sounds Great

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Brow Beat
Slate's Culture Blog
April 18 2013 4:12 PM

De La Soul Is Back, Still Great

delasoul
De La Soul.

Robbie Jefers.

It’s been almost a decade since the last full-on De La Soul Album, The Grind Date. In the meantime, the group has put out remixes and mashups and mixtapes, and even a quasi-De La album by two of the group’s key members. And, during this same stretch, if you believe founding member Maseo, hip-hop’s been mostly terrible. “Everything sounds the same. No real lyrical content. Everybody’s just doing business, not really creating.”

Hence the lyrics of De La Soul’s brand new track, “Get Away (feat. the Spirit of the Wu),” which, as the parenthetical indicates, nods to fellow old-school hip-hop crew the Wu-Tang Clan (who will also be back soon). “And like the Wu we bring it to you in the purest form,” the song opens, “we reside far away from the norm.” Whether you agree or not with the song’s take on the current hip-hop landscape, this is definitely a welcome addition to the scene. Enjoy.

David Haglund is the literary editor of NewYorker.com.