I’ve gotten bored with what I’ve been listening to lately, so recently I went back into my collection to dig out CDs I haven’t spun in a while, like De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising, an album I haven’t listened to in at least four or five years. Hearing this excellent disc again piqued my interest for two reasons, the first being that I didn’t realize the direct influence it most likely had on my love of both Urban Dance Squad and P.M. Dawn.
Urban Dance Squad brought rock, ska, and funk to their rap, throwing together bits and pieces of sounds that didn’t seem like they’d flow as one — sort of what Prince Paul does these days. 3 Feet High and Rising is one of the first albums he produced and a starting point for his future sound collisions. Then there’s P.M. Dawn, who happen to be one of my all-time favorite groups; there are at least three or four tracks on 3 Feet High that could have fit nicely on P.M. Dawn’s 1991 debut, Of the Heart, Of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience. With both groups the flow is pretty much the same, and even the lyrical style is similar, right down to the lines that seemingly make no sense on first listen but when broken down actually have some legit meaning.
But that’s not really the reason I’m bringing it up here. It’s because I’m wondering if there was any other album in the ’80s on which the biggest hit was track 20! 3 Feet High almost seems like a rap album from this decade, with a skit between every song (hell, they have two in a row at points), but even so, “Me, Myself and I,” a #1 rap hit and De La Soul’s only Top 40 hit (until they backed the Gorillaz on “Feel Good Inc.” in 2005), is buried all the way down at track 20.
I still think the album is excellent, despite the fact it felt like a decade had passed by the time I got to “Me, Myself and I,” but it really got me wondering if there was another track in the entire decade buried that far down on a disc. Greatest-hits and multiple-disc sets don’t count — I’m talking a single disc where the biggest hit was that far down. Hell, even just a single that was that far down on an album. Better yet, name any big hit that far down on a normal LP in any decade. It might have happened more frequently in the past decade on rap albums, but I still think it’s a pretty rare feat.
