DE LA SOUL - De La Soul Is Dead 2LP

Double album.

The first album introduced a completely new style to hip-hop. Skits within the album to create a story or concept. Here, that style is repeated but the skits make more sense this time and help the album flow. The skits here are super entertaining and lead into the songs quite well. The theme of this album surrounds a kid getting bullied and having someone steal his De La Soul tape. In the end, the tape is thrown in the trash while the person with the tape says "De La Soul is dead.."

Now for the real reason this album is so special. Prince Paul's production. Once again, Prince Paul produced the entire album for the group, and he outdoes himself from the first album. The drum loops here are really addictive and they bang. Also, the layers of samples is so complex, making the production very interesting to dig into. A lot of these drum patterns have been used by other artists, but some of them are very obscure. This is part of being innovative. The samples range from so many different places. You have funk and jazz samples, but also samples from other old songs of many genres.