De La Soul – 3 Feet High And Rising

Every day on the 1Xtra show this week, I’ll be bringing you bonafide Hip Hop classics on fast forward to warm you up for this weekend’s 30 years of Hip Hop celebrations on 1Xtra & Radio 1 with the Minipieces (mini masterpieces – geddit?). We’re tackling an album per decade per day – Monday is the 80′s and De La Soul’s seminal ’3 Feet High And Rising’ from 1989 reps for the decade.

I remember first hearing this on a tape my dad was given by a friend at his work. My dad liked “Me, Myself and I” and “Eye Know” but wasn’t too keen on the rest of the album. Even though I was 6 at the time, I loved it and it got rinsed alongside the tapes of 80′s soul and the Janet Jackson ‘Control’ album my uncle had done for me. It was my first ever Hip Hop album and was only surpassed by MC Hammer’s ‘Please Hammer Don’t Hurt Em’ as my favourite a year later in 1990… what? I was only young!

Where were you when you first heard it? Which Hip Hop album would be your 80′s Minipiece?

Tomorrow Nas’ “Illmatic” represents for the 90′s.