De La Soul’s Buhloone Mindstate: A 20th Anniversary Retrospective

On September 21st, 1993, De La Soul released their third LP, Buhloone Mindstate, on Tommy Boy Records. De La Soul and Prince Paul produced yet another magnum opus in the vein of the their first two albums but like their previous efforts it was completely different. Twenty years since its release, it is still a high watermark for Hip-Hop. 

Their 1989 debut album 3 Feet High & Rising was an avant garde progressive Hip-Hop album that happened to cross over and left the group feeling as though they were being pigeonholed and misunderstood. Their equally classic second effort De La Soul Is Dead, which dropped in 1991 was a complete departure from the previous album in tone, but retained all of the quirkiness and originality of their debut. De La Soul declared themselves dead so listeners were forced to throw out all of their old ideas of what the Long Island trio was about or what they stood for and judge them strictly off of their present body of work.

De La Soul had two critically acclaimed albums under their belts but in 1993 the current climate of the Rap world was far from the one that the Native Tongues movement flourished under at the tail end of the first Golden Era. Tommy Boy pressured De La Soul to try to produce an effort that would be do as well commercially as their debut. De La Soul maintained that whatever music they made might crossover and potentially sell like their debut inexplicably did, would not go Pop. They were not going to make music that purposefully appealed to a wider audience because they knew that would truly spell doom for them.

Sonically, Buhloone Mindstate’s theme was far more upbeat than De La Soul Is Dead. But clocking in at only 15 tracks, 4 of which were skits, you could tell off the bat that we were in the midst of an aesthetic transition of some sort. Previous to Buhloone Mindstate, De La Soul albums averaged just under 26 tracks along with skits that averaged in the double digits. The album was recorded and mixed by Bob Power and the combination of De La Soul, Prince Paul and the legendary engineer really paid off when you heard the final product.

Fans & heads alike were excited for the album after hearing “Breakadawn”, which even cracked the Billboard Hot 100 shortly after debuting on Yo! MTV Raps. But not even an excellent lead single could properly prepare the listener for the experience that was Buhloone Mindstate. The album opens with the sound of a balloon being inflated then popping followed by the repeated word/phrases “Stickabush” in coordination with “It might blow up but it won’t go pop until “Stickabush” is dropped out all together and “It might blow up but it won’t go pop gets progressively louder over a loop of the opening of Outlaw Blues Band’s “Deep Gully”. It then seamlessly slips into the opener “Eye Patch” and right back into “Deep Gully” again before “eN FoCUS” starts up. We were barely three tracks into the album and you already felt like you were taking a correspondence course master class in album sequencing.

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Photo: Tommy Boy

Buhloone Mindstate featured multiple appearances and vocal contributions from Dres of Black Sheep and Shortie No Mas who also appeared on The Roots’ debut Organix from earlier that same year. This would be the first time most Rap fans ever heard her as The Roots debut was initially sold only at their shows. “eN FoCUS” gave way to the Jazzy anti-crossover song “Patti Dooke” featuring Guru from Gang Starr on the hook and perfectly placed audio from the film The Five Heartbeats. Every voice, adlib, transition, scratch and verse on “Patti Dooke” blended together perfectly to create one of the most overlooked compositions in Rap strictly because it was so effortless and De La Soul and Prince Paul had done it so many times before it was like old hat to Hip-Hop heads by then.

Next, legendary Soul/Jazz/Funk saxophonist Maceo Parker appears on the hauntingly beautiful instrumental composition “I Be Blowin'” which appears a third through the album and would become the base of  “I Am I Be,” the song that opens up the last third of the album. The last third of Buhloone Mindstate was important for several reasons I’ll touch on later. Japanese MC’s SDP and Takagi Kan appear on the skit “Long Island Wildin'” which leads right into what would become the album’s second single “Ego Trippin’ [Part Two].” The song was just thought of as a dope album track featuring Al Hirt’s “Harlem Hendo” until it was released as a single. It wasn’t even considered a hardcore Rap parody until the video hit BET and MTV in early 1994 which put it into a completely different context. Amazing how visuals being added to a song can change how you perceive it.

“3 Days Later” and “Area” were two more perfectly executed album tracks that persuaded you to exercise your rewind button. That brings us to “I Am I Be,” a song in which Posdnous made the case to be considered one of the best MC’s on the planet and he also confirmed what we had all feared, the Native Tongues crew dynamic was all but done. The Jungle Brothers who kicked off the entire movement just 5 years previous with their debut album Straight Out The Jungle weren’t at the forefront anymore having been completely overshadowed by the accomplishments of A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul. While Tribe and De La remained involved with each other (Trugoy/Dove/Dave of De La Soul did the chorus of “Award Tour” the lead single off ATCQ’s Midnight Marauders third LP which dropped less than two months after theirs did) the Jungle Brothers, Queen Latifah & Monie Love were no longer in the fold, instead being replaced by Black Sheep and Leaders Of The New School. Then came “In The Woods”…

Over the knocking drums on “In The Woods” De La Soul playfully trade bars with Shortie No Mas punctuated by a classic verse from Posdnous where he hits us off with the gem “F*ck being hard/Posdnous is complicated!” and the atomic bomb declaration “Yo, that Native sh*t is dead so the Stickabush is comin’!” I’ll never forget the reaction to those two songs when heads heard them 20 years ago, it was like Posdnous had pronounced someone we all knew had been in a coma for a few years & was unresponsive dead to the public. It was truly another era, yet another Golden Era with a completely different energy than the previous one possessed.

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While De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest were considered associated acts as part of a larger movement, we were all aware they were still in direct competition with each other. They each had classic debut albums and each had shattered the notion of the sophomore jinx by delivering stellar second albums which showed noticeable growth. De La Soul knew that Buhloone Mindstate would be weighed against the upcoming A Tribe Called Quest album Midnight Marauders and they responded in kind. Even as we listened to one we anticipated the other. Another genius move is that “Breakadawn” doesn’t appear until the end of the album. The song that got people so amped for the album in the first place ends up a forgotten man on the project rather than completely standing out from it.

The album closes with a skit and the Biz Markie guested “Stone Age”. The 15 track project was a concise, perfectly sequenced and masterfully executed piece of art from top to bottom. Buhloone Mindstate incorporated Jazz, Rock, Funk and the collective genius of De La Soul, Prince Paul and Bob Power in order to create another classic album. The following months would bring even more classic and notable releases from Lords Of The Underground (Here Come The Lords), Digable Planets (Reachin’: A New Refutation Of Time & Space),  KRS One (Return Of The Boom Bap), Souls Of Mischief (93 Til Infinity), Leaders Of The New School (T.I.M.E.), Black Moon (Enta Da Stage), Wu Tang Clan (Enter The 36 Chambers) and A Tribe Called Quest (Midnight Marauders) but De La Soul’s Buhloone Mindstate still stands out even amongst this wave of excellent projects.

In conclusion, De La Soul’s third LP (and their final collaboration with Prince Paul) not only stands out as one of the best albums Hip-Hop had to offer in one of it’s greatest years but as an unadulterated classic that sounds just as great as it did 20 years ago as it does today. The first mark of classic material is that stands the test of time. Keep in mind that there’s a reason why I’ve blocked out hours to write about it two decades removed from it’s release rather than invest any of my energy writing about the disposable major label Rap music that’s prevalent today.