De La Soul @ Metro City, Perth(12/02/2011)

Sun 13th Feb, 2011 in Gig Reviews

Let’s begin with a little history…

1987: De La Soul form on Long Island, New York
1989: De La Soul release their critically and commercially acclaimed debut, Three Feet High and Rising. Despite the acclaim, the group receive backlash from certain quarters of the hip-hop community and are labelled “hippies”
1991: De La Soul release De La Soul is Dead; as critically and commercially acclaimed as their debut, the album has a harder edge and combats their detractors and the “hippies” label in particular.
2011: De La Soul embark on their 20th anniversary De La Soul is Dead tour, which is promoted as featuring the album played live in its entirety, from start to finish.

One of these things is untrue. Guess which one.

At 7pm on the 12th of February, the Metro City doors would open for a group of hip-hop fans expecting to hear one of the genre’s all time classics played live. After some uninspiring support acts, Prince Paul (DJ and producer of the first three classic De La Soul albums) appeared and laid down a set of some much loved funk and hip hop grooves. The man was the perfect opener for De La Soul, not just because of his long history with the group, but for the fact that he was as entertaining as De La Soul has always been. Prince Paul got the place jumping, and the joints were as infectious as a severe dose of chicken pox. Eventually Prince Paul made his way and left the hyped up crowd waiting for a heavily anticipated set… that would never come.

As each member appeared on the stage, De La Soul began with a call and response generated to increase excitement tenfold. The crowd was into it from the get go, and were ready for what should have been one of the most celebrated hip-hop gigs to happen in Perth for some time. However, they didn’t start off with Intro or Oodles of Os as was expected, instead choosing a hit from one of their later albums instead. Still, maybe they were just warming us up for what was to come. Maceo was on the decks letting the tunes fly, and Pos and Dave were in full flight. Next came the title track from The Stakes Are High, which was met with more rapturous approval.

Surely they were going to play De La Soul is Dead soon, right? Well, not quite. They offered us some classics from Three Feet High and Rising, which were, of course, appreciated. How could they not be? The guys were on form and the crowd loved every second. Pos and Dave can still out-rap most others and Maceo was the glue holding it all together. They kept us smiling throughout. Yet still, one couldn’t help but start feeling a little disappointed. Weren’t we supposed to be hearing De La Soul is Dead? Finally came Oodles Of Os, and we were off! De La Soul is Dead had finally begun! The guys belted it out and it was as amazing as expected, possibly even beating the album version! Then came partial parts of Pease Porridge and Pass The Plugs. Sure, they may have only been partial but at least we were hearing them.

Then they started playing other material instead.

This was to be a process that would last the rest of the night. De La Soul were entertaining as always, the crowd had their hands in the air and called out everything asked of them, but we never heard more than six songs from De La Soul is Dead all night. The only word to express this show was disappointment. When you go in expecting to hear an album, and a very much loved one at that, in its entirety and are instead met with a greatest hits set, it’s a let down. Especially when De La Soul only played for an hour, tops.

It’s difficult to know who to blame. Was it the band’s decision? Were they just not feeling it the way they claimed to be? Was it false advertising by the promoters? Certainly, the fans didn’t get what they paid for. In fact, they got substantially less, and little more than what Perth saw when the boys supported Gorillaz in December. As fun as the show was at the time, it now feels half-baked. We can now only dream of what might have been. Maybe De La Soul is dead after all.