For iconic Long Island, New York hip-hop group De La Soul, 2023 was the very definition of bittersweet.
After decades of sample clearance issues and lengthy disputes with former record label Tommy Boy, the trio’s first six albums — including 1989’s game-changing masterpiece 3 Feet High and Rising — finally reached streaming services on March 3rd of that year. What should have been a celebration for a hard-won victory was marred by the tragic February 12th passing of founding member David “Trugoy the Dove” Jolicoeur, 54, who’d been living with congestive heart failure.
At the urging of Trugoy’s sister Cindy, the group’s remaining members Kelvin “Posdnuos” Mercer, 56, and Vincent “Maseo” Mason, 55, decided to continue as De La Soul to honour their fallen friend and keep his legacy alive.
That mission has culminated in ninth album Cabin in the Sky, the group’s first LP since 2016’s Grammy-nominated And the Anonymous Nobody… and the latest instalment of record label Mass Appeal’s Legend Has It… series, which has seen the release of new albums from celebrated rap veterans like Slick Rick, Mobb Deep, and Ghostface Killah.
Cabin in the Sky, named after a 1943 film musical Posdnuos came across while watching TV, contains several songs Trugoy recorded before his passing. While not physically present, Posdnuos says his fellow MC and creative foil was still a crucial force throughout the creation of the album.
“He was right there with us doing it — his energy and his spirit, his influence on the way I thought about things lyrically,” says Posdnuos from a hotel in New York City. “Certain songs that we used were actual songs that he created, whether it’s the last song on the album, ‘Don’t Push Me’, which Dave produced and rhymed on. The beginning of the album, ‘YUHDONTSTOP’ — that was a bit of music that Dave produced that I extended and made something out of. So his energy is really felt throughout the entire album because he physically participated. That’s what I love about it.
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“It’s that old saying of ‘steering the ship’ when someone transitions and they become your angel from this other plane, looking out for you and allowing all these positive things to happen for you. It’s been like that since he left us. All these great things that happened with the catalogue and the music being accepted and so many other opportunities. It’s the same with this album. His presence is there. People are loving what they’re hearing and that’s just so satisfying because we put a lot into this and we enjoy it for ourselves. God willing, everyone else will feel the same.”
“Based on the title and conceptually how the album flows, it sounds like he’s working on the album from the heavens,” adds Maseo. “He did the album.”
Understandably, both Posdnuos and Maseo say that operating as a two-man unit rather than a trio has taken some getting used to.
“Pretty much since [Dave passed] we had still been doing shows, so that in itself was a gigantic adjustment,” says Posdnuos. “Just not seeing Dave and feeling like Dave was about to get on the stage and perform, but then I’d think, ‘Oh wait a minute, I normally would do Dave’s ad libs, but now I gotta do a whole verse.’ Things like that took a minute for us to get used to.
“So for me, when it came down to the album, I felt like I was already used to certain ways of him not being there, and I just kind of envisioned him there with me, giving his advice, putting in his magic that he would normally do on a track. And his quality control — Dave was very, very, very picky when it came to music, to beats, to how things were said, how they sounded. And I did my best to keep that energy like, ‘Yo, if Dave was here, Dave would tell me to say this rhyme better. If Dave was here, he would tell me clean up the sample like that.’ All that was placed into the album.”
“Like every aspect of being De La, we cannot wake up and not think about potential things he would think about,” says Maseo. “We can’t even move forward without knowing that it just automatically exists, you know what I mean? Just caring about the things we know he would care about. It’s definitely a major adjustment, but it is a responsibility and a task that we’re up for.”
Credit: Supplied
Featuring production from Trugoy, hip-hop heavyweights Pete Rock and DJ Premier, and past collaborators like Jake One and Supa Dave West, Cabin in the Sky weaves together De La Soul’s storied past with fresh new avenues, all while maintaining the air of both a joyous celebration and moving tribute.
“For me, it’s always been the biggest success to have music that you’ve thought about and you wanted to try and then to finally get it down out of your mind onto tape, so to speak, in the studio,” says Posdnuos. “That was the biggest success to see – ideas we thought about and to have them come to life and different artists you thought about who could be a great instrument to include on a song, and it happens. And certain artists you could ask for, maybe they didn’t have the time, and then you find someone else that fills that space just about correctly. So it’s been an amazing success to me at this point that we’ve got everything done.”
“I have to echo what Pos is saying as well, at the same time it being very therapeutic to our loss as well,” adds Maseo. “And I mean our loss — the fans as well.”
Featuring an intro and 19 full songs, Cabin in the Sky has the second-longest run time of any De La Soul album at over 71 minutes (1991’s De La Soul Is Dead takes the top spot with over 73 minutes), yet it still flows as a cohesive body of work — something that the duo put in considerable effort to achieve.
“Being in a studio and hearing a certain song, it would be like, ‘Hey, this song feels like it could go there, but not only that, let’s build an entire other song around it,’” says Posdnuos. “Like having the idea for [the Bananarama and Roy Ayers sampling] ‘Cruel Summers Bring FIRE LIFE!!’ — it really came about because the ‘Day in the Sun’ song already existed and I thought it could be cool to have this buildup of tension and issues between a man and a woman or two people who love each other and then it leads up to ‘Day in the Sun’.”
Although primarily known as the group’s DJ, Maseo has intermittently rhymed on De La Soul songs over the years, and he makes a welcome return to the mic on jubilant album highlight “Will Be”.
“You probably gonna get more of me [rhyming] in the future, but not because of Dave not being here. It was pretty much gonna happen anyway, you know what I mean?,” says Maseo. “It was time for me to get back on the mic. When you look at the comment sections over the years, everybody has been asking for me to get back on the mic, so I’ve been making my attempts. It’s all about the right song. With the next album you’ll probably have more of me rapping.”
Both Posdnuos and Maseo says it’s unlikely a shelved 2013 album called You’re Welcome will ever see the light of day, although fans can still expect the long-awaited third part of their Art Official Intelligence trilogy, an ode to DJs, that was promised all the way back on De La Soul’s 2001 album AOI: Bionix.
“[Cabin in the Sky] was definitely the Pete [Rock] and DJ Premier project that we were supposed to do [the previously announced EP Premium Soul on the Rocks], but that morphed into something greater,” says Maseo. “I’m hoping that in time, Godspeed, we get to doing the AOI 3 album that we committed to. It’s really just meeting our creative commitments to ourselves and our fans. The trilogy was always something that we wanted to complete, but it was difficult to do it when the first two [instalments] weren’t even available, streaming wise.”
Maseo rhyming isn’t the only surprise appearance on Cabin in the Sky. The album also features a murder’s row of top-tier MCs including Nas, Black Thought, Slick Rick, Common, and Killer Mike. The biggest surprise, however, is a cameo from fellow Native Tongues alumni and A Tribe Called Quest founder Q-Tip, who hasn’t dropped a verse on a De La Soul song since 1991’s “A Roller Skating Jam Named ‘Saturdays’”.
“That’s our brother, man,” says Posdnuos affectionately. “I call him my ‘little big brother’ ’cause he’s younger than me, but he’s larger than life and I respect his opinion on a lot of things. I had spoken to Tip and I was like, ‘Yo man, come around ’cause I’m gonna be in New York, just come around to the studio, I need that energy.’ And he’s like, ‘I’m there for you.’ So one day he came by and he was just listening to music ’cause Tip, he loves us like that. He’ll be honest, like, ‘Yo man, you can hit that rhyme better.’ Or he’ll be like, ‘Yo, Premier did this? You should tell him to not put too much of that in there.’ He was really helpful with his ideas. Even if it was stuff that I didn’t want to do, I was just grateful for him being honest.
“He was listening to the song that he got on [“Day in the Sun (Gettin’ Wit U)”], and he wasn’t even supposed to be on the song. He’s just listening to it, and I saw him out the side of my eye getting really hyped. And he’s like — he’s so stupid [laughs] — ‘You black motherfucker! Why didn’t you ask me to be on this record?!’ And then everyone just starts dying laughing [laughs]. I was like, ‘Word, you want to get on this?’ And he’s like, ‘YEAH I wanna get on this!’ It was so funny.”
When asked what their favourite track on the album is, both Posdnuos and Maseo struggle to land on a single choice.
“One minute it could be ‘Cabin in the Sky’, one minute it could be ‘Different World’. ‘Run It Back’ — it’s too many,” says Posdnuos. “It depends, but I would say right now, maybe ‘Run It Back’ [which samples “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by the Police]. I love the group the Police. I love the fact that the producer Supa Dave West flipped a Police record backwards and made it work so amazing. And I love the fact that even Nas, when he heard it, he felt the same way I did, and he just allowed the spirits to take over his hand and knock that rhyme out just like that. The energy around that record is so amazing.”
“I can’t lie, I’m torn,” says Maseo. “There’s a couple of them doing it for me, you know what I mean? The one with Black Thought [“EN EFF”, produced by DJ Premier], ‘Run It Back’, ‘The Package’, the title track… I’m torn. There’s a lot of cool shit.”
A few words spoken by Maseo near the beginning of Cabin in the Sky sum up the album succinctly: “Just be ready to get that feeling back — the memories of the good times. And don’t run away from the bad ones either, ’cause it’s all a part of life.” Although grief has placed Posdnuos and Maseo where they are today, so has a fruitful creative partnership — and friendship — that has existed for close to four decades.
“Losing Dave is losing Dave, meaning losing him in the physical, but we’ve done our best to understand what he means to us, what he will always mean to us, and that in itself is a blessing,” says Posdnuos. “To look at his life and know all that he’s done, all that he accomplished – he lived like five lives, you know what I’m saying?
“There’s a lot of people who don’t get to do and see the things [he did] and go be a part of the many things that we’re all blessed to be a part of as De La Soul. You can have someone who leaves this plane and they may not have accomplished things the way everyone would love to see them accomplish things, and that could be a reason to be super sad about it. But it was nothing but amazing and great thoughts we had and looking back on Dave, it was important for that to shine through the music, as opposed to just concentrating only on him leaving us.
When asked what Trugoy would think of Cabin in the Sky, Posdnuos’ answer is immediate and emphatic.
“I think Dave would love the album.”
De La Soul’s ninth album Cabin in the Sky is out now on Mass Appeal. De La Soul will also be playing live dates in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane in February and March 2026.
