Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age: The Music, Culture, and World De La Soul Made

McCoy, a history professor at West Virginia University, debuts with an expansive and energetic celebration of De La Soul’s contributions to hip-hop. Formed on Long Island in 1988 by Kelvin “Posnudos” Mercer, David “Trugoy” Joliceur, and Vincent “Maseo” Mason,” De La Soul sampled older tracks, contemporary songs, TV shows, and more, taking a “collage approach” to song production that was highly innovative but left much of their music tied up in lawsuits and off streaming platforms until recently. That absence “left a gaping hole in the history of hip-hop culture,” McCoy writes, and he does an admirable job of filling it, highlighting how the group drew from unorthodox influences (they sampled Liberace and Hall & Oates in their music, and wore bell-bottoms and colorful button-ups) to interrogate Black masculinity (“They made it okay for young Black men... to be weird, quirky, and vulnerable”). The group also critiqued racial and economic inequality as well as the materialism and “death-dealing coolness” that were hallmarks of the era’s mainstream rap. McCoy weaves in personal recollections and a wealth of diverse sources, from bell hooks to Ralph Ellison, to explore how De La Soul emerged from and engaged with a complex moment in American and Black culture, and how their style and sound shaped the future of music. The result is a sprawling, eclectic ode to an understudied piece of rap history. (Jan.)