Buhloone Mindstate

De La Soul

explicit

Released on 21/09/1993 by AOI Records
Main artists: De La Soul
Genre: Hip-Hop/Rap

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If you take De La Soul's first three albums collaborating with Prince Paul behind the boards as a sort of trilogy arc, 1993's Buhloone Mindstate represents a maturing epiphany after the youthful revolution of 3 Feet High and Rising and the defensive autonomy of De La Soul Is Dead. For one thing, it's a lot less comedic: Paul's role as beatmaker/advisor also played out like a mentor helping his friends figure the rest out for themselves, so at this point the characteristic skits and oddball sample juxtapositions recede in favor of something a bit more deliberately esoteric and reflective.

The production benefits from a tighter focus on soul-jazz soundscapes and cratedigger funk—complete with live appearances by The J.B.'s legends Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley and Pee Wee Ellis on "Patti Dooke" and "I Am I Be." (Parker's solo on the latter track's instrumental counterpart "I Be Blowin'" might be the single most transcendent moment of golden era hip-hop paying dues to its funk forebears.) But it's also a bit trippier and knottier than a lot of their peers were willing to go, with the deeply layered and sometimes borderline disorienting beats of tracks like old-school-mutating "Area" and the precipice-teetering slow-burn gallop "En Focus" using head-nodding drums to spin those heads 360 degrees; even the track that samples Michael Jackson ("Breakadawn") has a little bit of psilocybin glow to its mellow fusion.

Pos and Dave's unconventional flows and sleight-of-tongue lyrics provide some of the most intricately abstract verses to ever express sarcastic monomania (the rap boast deconstruction "Ego Trippin', Part Two"), existential reckonings (the soul-baring, intermittently emotionally wounded "I Am I Be"), and Afrocentric defiance (due-credit demand "Patti Dooke," featuring hooks and mic-trading verses from Gang Starr's Guru). The album's titular mindstate—"it might blow up, but it won't go pop"—seemed to anticipate a reception at odds with what mainstream rap was looking for at the time, and it didn't move the kind of units Tommy Boy was hoping for (or get the label push that De La were hoping for). But many of the fans who put their trust in De La Soul have grown over time to consider this arguably the group's finest album—a group sounding thoroughly liberated by the idea that, after two albums spent defining themselves to skeptics, they had nothing left to prove and everything to show for it. © Nate Patrin/Qobuz

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Buhloone Mindstate

De La Soul

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