Link. $15 gets you the album.
Hey, everybody: We are De La Soul: Posdnous, Dave, and Maseo. Were best known for our albums 3 Feet High and Rising, De La Soul Is Dead, Stakes Is High and many others. Some of our hit singles include "Me Myself and I," "Saturdays" and "Feel Good Inc." a collaboration with Gorillaz.
Weve collaborated with everyone from Chaka Khan to Common to even NASA: In 2004, our song "Potholes in My Lawn," became one of the first rap records to be beamed from another planet by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. Now we are here to collaborate with YOU, humanoid, on the most exciting project weve ever done.
For the last decade, we've been independent artists, free of a record label interfering in our creative process. This will be our first De La Soul studio album in eleven years. Were excited and ready to create. It's been essential that we find ways to fund, record and release new music. Typically the fans have been the ones who support and appreciate our vision, so using Kickstarter and giving our fans the opportunity to be a part of the process just feels right. We see Kickstarter as a home for creative minds and a wonderful platform; where people who believe, respect and see the vision, can support an idea and make it a reality.
True to our Hip-Hop roots, we make music without limits. This new album will incorporate elements of Jazz, Funk, Rock, Country Western and anything else we're feeling in the moment. To us, music is the influence of sounds, sounds in all vibrations and sizes, telling a story or pointing a direction. Some of these sounds we call samples, samples we use to make songs.
Sampling is basically copying a piece of sound, from one recording, and reusing it to create a new recording. It is how De La has always made music. The sampler is our instrument, but people who copy, and in this case "sample," have also been considered thieves and unoriginal. So, unfortunately a huge part of our career has also been spent fighting off the sample police.
Enough of those battles! For the new album, we needed a completely new approach, something Hip-Hop hasnt done before. So, here it is: For the first time, we're going to sample ourselves.
Over the last three years, we've hired some of LA's finest studio musicians and recorded them in free-styled, unrehearsed, jam sessions. They played everything from banjo to upright bass, sometimes up to a dozen musicians at once; simply allowing sounds to integrate. We did 90% of these recordings in one of LA's most classic studios, Vox. We chose Vox because we wanted our recordings to have that creamy analog warm mixing board sound that the old records our parents once played had. With over 200 hours of sounds, and vibes, equal to about 250 to 300 full-length vinyl LPs, it's time that we get to the work.
Heres the interesting part. We are now in the process of going back to that 200+ hours of music, listening, enjoying and discovering those special moments where, musically, something magical happens, where interesting sounds and layers were forgotten, where new sounds can be sampled, looped, chopped, filtered and arranged, freely, without the intrusive presence of publishing politics and the infamous sample police. What we've done is created our own crates of records; album upon albums to mine and sample from. In our world, what weve created is freedom, freedom to make the art you believe in without having to compromise your vision. Thats what weve always wanted most, thats what weve always believed in, thats what weve fought for, and thats why were doing this Kickstarter with you.
We have a fantastic cast of artist we're collaborating with. So far Damon Albarn (of Blur/Gorillaz), 2 Chainz, Little Dragon, and David Byrne (of Talking Heads) have blessed us with their talents; and well have more announcements of collabs to come, right here on Kickstarter.
Were crowdfunding it to help pay for recording, mixing, marketing, and everything else. Your support will keep us in the studio, help us continue to sample and manipulate the music weve recorded, will help us get additional production work done; and will help us design, package, market, and distribute the album. The whole thing. We literally cannot do it without you.
So now, for the goodies For your support wed like to offer you some cool rewards. Lets start with our Kickstarter only, 1GB De La Soul thumb drives uploaded with the new album. We have a limited amount of our 2015, out of stock De La Dunks by NIKE, autographed by us, for you. How about a De La Dinner Date? The three of us and you at our good friend Marcus Samuelssons new Harlem restaurant Street Bird. We have an exclusive De La Soul T-shirt only available on Kickstarter. Who wants to spend the afternoon in NY, hitting up the sneaker shops with Pos? Would you like to go shopping with Dave for vintage toys and action figures; or diggin for records with Maseo? Well you can when you "Go Shopping Wit De La." Were also offering limited edition colored vinyl LPs and a 7 singles, exclusive to Kickstarter only. The De La Soul Show reward gets you a personalized live show laminate, good worldwide for the next 10 years! How about a one-on-three Skype session with De La Soul? Finally, heres your opportunity to own, straight of his studio, Daves Platinum 3 Feet High and Rising revolving record plaque, autographed by us! Take a look at the right column for more De La-licious REWARDS!
