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De La Soul birthed a golden age of cerebral hip-hop and copyfight lawsuits with the release of its 1989 sample-based classic, 3 Feet High and Rising. Two decades later, the group is co-producing a workout-specific soundtrack with shoe titan Nike. Times they do a-change.
“We didn’t compromise being De La Soul, nor does it compromise Nike either,” says Maseo in the video embedded below, explaining De La Soul’s Are You In? (link opens iTunes), released Tuesday for $10. “It’s actually what we all look to do, which is be innovative. Get your body moving.”
Are You In? (get it? R-U-N?) is the latest installment in Nike’s Original Run series, which has recruited talented indie hip-hop and electronica artists like Aesop Rock, LCD Soundsystem and more to compose standalone albums designed as sonic companions for athletes looking for sweaty run sessions. De La Soul‘s installment is a digital blast, starting with atmospheric ambience and sprinting to head-banging stomps and Planet Rock-like synthetic funk without letting up. And while it is nowhere near as good as 3 Feet High and Rising, it’s also nowhere near as bad as mainstream crap from Kanye West, 50 Cent and others that has been polluting hip-hop since the turn of the century.
But the bleed between talented artistry and corporate sponsorship has always been a bizarro flux. Even Mozart had his patrons, after all. Hip-hop, which was born out of creative necessity and technological innovation in the face of crushing socioeconomic conditions, has regularly provided a curious case.
It’s not as obvious with a trio like De La Soul , which has always veered toward more labyrinthine pop-culture experimentation rather than the truth-to-power politics of its peers like Public Enemy. But even in the case of an artist like Saul Williams, who lambasted corporate oppression in his anti-poverty anthem “List of Demands,” which was licensed by Nike last year for a commercial, the corporate gravitational pull has proven inescapable.
“I think it guarantees that the people in power in that corporation are listening close to what I’m saying and what their kids are dancing to,” Williams told me in a conversation for the Huffington Post last year, after collaborating with Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor on his Niggy Tardust full-length and cooperating with Nike on the “List of Demands” ad buy.
“I think it makes them question their ethics as much as fans or reporters question mine. It also exposes a whole new world of people to my music, my thoughts, my world view, which will perhaps enlist more casual listeners into questioning authority, realizing their power and all of the things that my music demands.”
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Image courtesy Nike
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