3 Feet High and Rising

It's genuinely heartbreaking that this album isn't on any streaming services, because it means that De La Soul has fallen out of the conversation of greatest 80s and 90s hip hop groups. This album, their debut, is absolutely brilliant. Funny, corny, listenable. It influenced so many modern artists, and I didn't realize before hearing it how much my favorite albums (such as Wildflower, by the Avalanches) are based on it. I can't identify a favorite song or moment, because they're all so good. This is an instant 5/5 for me, and it's by far the best album on this list that I'd never listened to before.

Very fun and incredibly clever. Many reviews compare this record to Sgt. Pepper but for hip pop. The comparison is completely understandable. Very fun concept album with great lyricism and wonderful production. The album does not drag even with the track-listing being more than an hour long. The album just feels like a group of friends having fun on the mic and in the studio. Favorite Track: Magic Number Least Favorite Track: De La Orgee

One of the best hip hop albums on this list. The game show stuff was a really fun theme throughout. Great lyrics, samples, and beats. Plus Q-tip!

They are clearly having so much fun making this album. The friendly comedy sketches. The playful dissing (“everybody in the world, you got dandruff”, “you got doo doo in your pocket”). Wild to hear so many samples out of their context (Otis Reddings SOTDOTB whistle track in “Eye Know”). Crazy to think they made this before technology made it way easy. Just a damn fun album. The beats are hypnotizing. I could listen to the instrumental of “Plug Tunin’” for hours. As the album marches on they get bolder when it comes to the explicit content. Problematic for the suburbs in 1989 I’m sure. When “Me, Myself and I” drops toward the end, I got excited because I finally knew a song. That one has been there my whole life, hanging on the wall, sprucing things up. I’ll be coming back to this for sure.

How many times did the Batmobile catch a flat???

Wonderful, if it's not the Sgt Pepper's of hip-hop, it is the Dark Side of the Moon of hip-hop! Absolute genius, even if it's not on Spotify

A fantastic and influential debut album from a talented trio, bringing a new sound and image to hip hop (one somewhat rebuked on their follow up De La Soul is Dead) and recalling the earlier days of classic hip hop. There are so many classic tracks here and is a showcase for the art of sampling, creating something new from something old. Three Is The Magic Number and Me, Myself and I are wicked party tracks, Eye Know is a surprisingly touching hip hop love song and Buddy is an energetic posse cut with like minded acts Jungle Brothers and Q Tip (but seek out the superior 12 inch remix with Phife Dawg, Queen Latifah and Monie Love plus a Kazoo horn section!). The downsides are an obsession with body odour and bad breath and a slew of skits and in jokes which amuse the band but nobody else. For this, a star was almost docked but my love for the band and for some even greater albums that followed since (Buhloone Mindstate, De La Soul is Dead) five stars are coming De La’s way.

Eh if this was a tribe called quest I wouldn't have been able to tell difference, also link went to "the missing album by the noel reading band and I listened to most of that(which if you care was 3/5)

Obv 5 star

Top 10 all time. At Least

What a fun listen! This album is cited in this site for being of the called "Golden Age of Hip Hop" for a good reason. With a very original concept, a great sense of humour and the incorporation of many different genres from funk to rap rock, this album is a true masterpiece. My only issue is: why tf isn't this album on Spotify? It's so sad that this fun piece of hip hop history hadn't made it to the biggest music streaming service.

Easily one of the best hip-hop albums of all time, 3 Feet High and Rising also belongs in the pantheon of the greatest sample based albums of all time alongside The Beastie Boys’ “Paul’s Boutique”, DJ Shadow’s “Entroducing” and The Avalanches’ “Since I Left You.” This is a master class, a tour de force…5 stars aren’t enough.

Last night, I had a dream. There's this woman - young, cool, big hair - driving down a packed New York street in a car with friends. Windows are down, sky is blue, there's an array of kitsch memorabilia in the back and on the dashboard. Hanging off the rear view mirror is a talking wireless speaker, probably voiced by Eddie Murphy. He yells that he wants to be played, and opts for De La Soul's "Me, Myself and I". There follows an extended dance sequence in which the woman driving the car, and then everybody around her, jumps out of their cars and dances on the roofs. Like that bit in "La La Land", but better, because… well, because it's soundtracked by De La Soul. And so I rest my case: after just a couple of days of listening, "3 Feet High and Rising" is an album with the power to send good vibes deep into the subconscious. Life is made surreal, technicolour, magical and fun with just an hour a day around these folks. That's something special. De La Soul's first full-length album is often credited as one of the progenitors of hip-hop's golden age. Besides the invader-of-my-dreams-smash-hit "Me Myself and I", there's "Eye Know", which draws together samples of Steely Dan and Otis Redding into a ecstatic, sunny jam. "The Magic Number" fuses Schoolhouse Rock with a drum sample originally from Led Zeppelin, while "Potholes in my Lawn", an allegory for other people stealing lines from the group, throws in a yodelling interlude for good measure. Two of the other hits, "Plug Tuning" and "Buddy" (with A Tribe Called Quest's Q-Tip), are more studied cool, but still get me nodding along every time. My other favourite tracks include "Tread Water", a spiritual journey disguised as an Alice in Wonderland-esque nursery rhyme, and "Change in Speak", with its irresistible horns and wriggling bassline sample. That's quite a hit ratio. While many of the rhymes may be sneered at by serious hip-hop heads (there's an awful lot of nursery-rhyme style trochaic meter, "De-la" prefixes and totally unserious tangents), the sense of fun cannot be surpassed and overrides everything. The humour is on point here: the quiz show framework baffled me at first but then won me over by the fourth or fifth listen. The schoolboy style chants like "Can U Keep A Secret", "Take It Off" and "Do as De-La Does" are ridiculous, but winningly high-spirited. And the interlude midway through "Jenifa Taught Me", in which little Darwin breaks into a rendition of "Chopsticks" while the rest of the group cheer him on, never fails to make me smile. This is my favourite hip-hop album on the list so far, and is going to be hard to top.

Can only listen to half on YouTube as album is not available on other streaming platforms

Smart, inventive, playful, positive, and unlike anything that had gone before. And the sort of album that couldn’t be made now in this age of strict sample clearance, as I am sure the almost-bankrupted De La would attest to. Which is a shame, as the samples are used creatively and with love, but there you go. One of the greatest albums ever made.

This sounded unlike anything else when I first bought it back in 1989. It's the loved up response to a West Coast rap scene that was heading down the gangster route. I knew which direction I wanted to turn to. Hip Hop concept albums should usually be avoided. But the dialogue and in-jokes aren't annoying, They keep the Daisy Age feel flowing thoughout. There's still room for politics with It's a Ghetto Thing. Plus there's also personal politics on Say No Go. This should be a SIX star album.

love

Wow, hard to find to stream but what a nice sound and vibe.

One’s personal high-water mark for hip-hop. The joy and warmth and humor, plus the communal feel of the whole thing. Listening today, one senses there’s perhaps too much filler (or forgettable inserts). This many full-on classics makes this 5. Shame about the lawsuit. And don’t sleep on De La Soul is Dead.

Despite never listening, I have heard good things about De La Soul. They were only recently put on Spotify due to sample-clearing issues, which may explain the blind spot for me and modern listeners. I like alternative hip hop and this album could be considered the genesis of that subgenre. It's a fun listen, and they were clearly having fun messing around making this. You can hear its influence on many modern projects. I really dug the "sampledelia" instrumentals, extra impressive since this was before easy sampling tech. I found some of the dialogue and in-jokes kind of corny and annoying, and this album holds the dubious distinction for inventing the dreaded "rap skit." The lyrics sometimes almost gave me the juvenile vibe of a "t3h PeNgU1N oF d00m" (soooo randommm). I'll blame my lack of lyrical connection on unfamiliarity, which will improve on subsequent listens now that it's on Spotify. The music is just too good and the album too influential on a genre I like to rate it a 3. *Saw a couple reviews that said this was "hip hop's Sgt. Pepper" and the timing is ironic because we got Sgt. Pepper the following day.*

I remembered I liked this, but I liked it better than I remembered. Sounds newer and fresher than it is. Favorite song: Eye know

Fantastic hip hop album. The Steely Dan sample song was my favorite

Pot holes on my lawn. Fun sing along 90s hip hop. I miss this era of rap music. Creative samples and scratching

I liked it a lot. I listened to it twice (had it on in the background). I'm a huge fan of old school hip hop and this was something I wasn't very aware of. I like Heiroglyphics a lot, so this was a nice treat.

oh this is cool, i've been getting a lot of old school h- STEELY DAN PEG????

It's good fun, too long though Tread Water probably the best song

everybody in the world you got dandruff? goofy good and fun

I found this to be a fun vibe! Just 3 friends fucking around. Not necessarily something I'll come back to, but definitely in the upper percentile of things to come out of long island.

Nr. 136/1001 Intro NR The Magic Number 3/5 (3x) Change In Speak 3/5 (2x) Cool Breeze on the Rock NR Can You Keep a Secret 2/5 (2x) Jenifa Taught Me 3/5 (3x) Ghetto Thang 3/5 (3x) Transmitting Live From Mars 2/5 (1x) Eye Know 5/5 (3x) Take It Off 2/5 (2x) A Little Bit Of Soap 3/5 (1x) Tread Water 3/5 (3x) Potholes in My Lawn 3/5 (3x) Say No Go 3/5 (3x) Do As De La Does 2/5 (2x) Plug Tunin' 3/5 (3x) De La Orgee 1/5 (1x) Buddy 3/5 (3x) Description 3/5 (1x) Me Myself and I 4/5 (3x) This Is A Record 4 Living 3/5 (3x) I Can Do Anything 2/5 (1x) D.A.I.S.Y. Age 3/5 (3x) Average: 2,98 Really liked Eye Know. The Rest was a mixed bag.

This was clearly a lot of fun for these guys to record. I enjoyed the light-hearted nature of the tracks. One listen is fine.

I’m just happy I can hear this on Spotify after De La’s unfortunate contract deals. One of the best by one of the best.

un peu country

Loved this album!

Awesome album, one of my favorite rap styles

Classic

Chill easy to listen too and good vibe

This album isn't perfect, but it is still amazing. The range of samples and what's created from them is pretty brilliant, even if it could be trimmed a bit. I also feel like this is one where I feel the goofy skits are sometimes a lot of fun, even if I usually skip them. This is one of my favorite albums of this era.

Great album.

I played it so loud that I went def.

Five Fresh and Funky Stars

ludilo album, triput poslusala, bangeri i dalje bengaju

Meni ti je ovo jedan od najdražih albuma uopće. Sigurno top pet hip hop albuma i vjerojatno najdraži feelgood/pozitivan album uopće

Classic old school hip hop nonsense!

5 stars , even though the skits are skippable !

Classic

This is what all hip hop should have aspired to and be the benchmark for any comparisons within the genre. Lyrics are witty and tightly woven, but more importantly, don’t lower themselves to the misogynistic drivel that is pumped out and hailed as being outstanding (looking at you Mr Lamar).

Gear: Focalman Cleardara Artwork: 🟨🌼🔃 Production: 🎛️👍🕺 Music: 🎤🌈🔥 Rating: 🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼/5

Great!

Was a little afraid of the length of the album but it was well composed and overall I really liked it. Original sound and awesome vibe.

A scrapbook of ideas dense with detail. Should have been the future sound of hip-hop but sampling laws put a stop to that. There is a reason everyone adores this thing: it’s a complete blast!

One of my favorites!! Can’t believe this was 36 years ago!!

1. I love how in early hip hop there was no concern about your samples having been “done before” so you would just throw in stand by me and sitting on the dock of the bay 2. Believe it or not this isn’t even the best de la soul album (DLS is dead)

I'm almost a full year into this and I have to say there's not enough hip hop on here. So I was very excited today when 3 Feet High and Rising came up. Especially after yesterday's stinker. I'd rate this album immediately if it let me. I rated it 35 years ago

This just absolutely rips. We need more Hip-Hop like this in 2025. Its goofy, its funny, and its good! Really good. Happy this is on streaming finally. Best Song: Buddy Rating: 8.5/10 5 Stars

classic. influential af. plenty of bangers but some of the skits are a bit of a chore. fun album tho

Weird fun boppy clever, never heard anything like it

Nice

Amazing vibe

One of my favorite hip hop albums ever. So fun

Great rap album. Thoroughly enjoyed

Really enjoyed this. 3 is the magic number

One of my all time favourite albums - never get tired of it

The samples (Hall & Oates!) put this up there with Paul's Boutique, but the through line of repeated lyrics, story telling, and game / children's show skits give it a world-building feel that the Beastie Boys' album doesn't have. & while this feels like the antecedent to so many other hip hop subgenres, it's still so uniquely its own thing - and has a timeless feeling that very few other albums from this period have.

Oh hip hop

The group of MCs and producers who made this album couldn't get any cooler and it feels like they are letting the listener in on their coolness.

The skits detract from the great music, but they are mercifully short so I'm not docking a star, although I was tempted. As for the music itself, I love it. Say No Go is probably my favourite track, but the whole album is strong.

Ooh De La. The hundreds of uncleared samples. The daft but fun lyrics littered throughout. The endless joyous beats. The constantly going on about plugs (I failed to comprehend) The run from Eye Know through to Say No Go. The magic number and me myself and i The offer of a grand prize - I want to know what it was!

great

So good! Been meaning to check them out for a while now but kept forgetting, I’m so glad I got this album, its just excellent

a perfect album. Maybe my favorite jazz rap album of all time and I only had first heard it in tenish years ago now. Very funny and fun. Clever. Great beats. What else is there to say?

Eye Know that this is classic. Fantastic release.

Stone cold 5. Awesome use of samples and a breath of fresh air. Uplifting, unpredictable and trailblazing. Killer

Great album 5/5

More like 4.5 but this is so fun so here we are

When people say "the vibes are immaculate", this is what they mean. An incredible debut

Loopy, lackadaisical, lyrical genius. So fun! Rhymes never went where expected and the beats are a singular vision. World expanding.

So fun and silly, wish I had this as a kid (even better, we got it when we’re 40)

I seem to remember having this on cassette tape. I don't know what to say about this album except that I love it. Possibly the first time I really "got" sampling in my young life, back in the days when music journalists were still asking if rap was a fad. The albums a bit inconsistent but where it hits, it hits hard and it's so unique that I can overlook a few short tracks of mucking about that don't land for me. Five stars!

All albums will be 1, 3 or 5 stars, with no further commentary or explanation given. I feel bad now about having given Spotify so much free promotion, so from here on out: re-listen, via streaming.

I love the album cover, and the intro song was funny and charming. I like that the album continues with the scene set in that song, they don’t take themselves too seriously. The Magic Number is a song I’ve heard so many times but never knew the artist, it’s such a good song. De La Soul sounds like the origins of hip hop with a little soul combined and I love the vibes. Every song is something my body wants to move to. The beat in Change In Speak is fire. Can U Keep a Secret is so funny… Danny is a SCRUBBB. Eye Know also has a fire beat it’s something you can’t help but nod your head to. Fave Song: Eye Know Least Fave Song: Say No Go Overall rating: 5/5

Loved every second of this. Really surprised how much I enjoyed it.

There are so many flaws in early hip-hop albums, it took many years of trial and error to really perfect the genre - but it’s the flaws, bumps, and faults with this album that make it so damn good. That being said, the production on this album is unreal. Eye Know is such a well-produced track it’s not even funny. I listened to this album for the first time ever this year, introduced to me on vinyl. My first listen I was pretty indifferent, it was enjoyable, but nothing really stuck out to me except for Me Myself & I. Then I listened to it again, and again. And again. Then I finally took a deep dive into this after getting it on this list - and wow, what an album. Every beat slaps, every bar rhymed with purpose. As I said, it’s not perfect, but that’s what makes this such a raw experience. Not to mention, extremely tasteful features (I’m looking at you, Q-Tip). The only massive drawback I have with this album is the sex scene. I will never for the life of me understand why artists think I want to hear that shit in songs. Christ. I think if I didn’t listen to this for a 5th time I would have given it a 4, but it’s really grown on me a lot. I don’t think you’d be able to find a better alternative hip-hop album of the 1980’s, and I’d love to be proven wrong. So impressed with this album and it only seems to get better the more times I listen to it.

Amazing, refreshing, fun. We need more De La Soul in this world.

This album had a seismic impact when it was released. I've still got the original vinyl copy I purchased on import. There was nothing else really like it. The skits between tracks, the lyrics, the humour, the sound! I'm probably in a minority by saying the follow-up album -De La Soul Is Dead - is better. That really is splitting hairs though, they are both incredible. One of the easiest 5 stars I've given.

This rap feels so effortless. I had never heard of De La Soul, but I'm really enjoying the rap groups of this era, like ATCQ and the Roots. Cool samples from all over, groovy bass lines, and creative lyrics keep this sounding impeccable. I could listen to this all day. The best here is probably Eye Know, but I also liked Jenifa Taught Me, The Magic Number, Buddy (Q-Tip again, awesome), and Me Myself and I. Could probably do without the skits, but thats a genre problem more than this album.

Classic good vibes hip hop in an era of gangster rap

It remains a peak of all hip hop, not just the alternative brand. It’s murky and creative and affirmative b/c it is engineered by thinking and is immensely enjoyable to listen to.

De La Soul would not be my first pick from the Native Tongues collective (which also included A Tribe Called Quest and Jungle Brothers), but this debut is the trio in all their "Daisy Age" regalia, and it was a little revolution in hip hop, kiddies. Not that you would necessarily perceive it that clearly decades after the fact. What's a little strange about De La Soul is that most of their subsequent albums during the nineties were probably as good as this one, and maybe even aged a little better. In all objectivity, *3 Feet High And Rising* shows the rappers' sound not exactly fully formed, contrary to *Stakes Is High*, for instance. Follow-up LP *De La Soul Is Dead*, from whom the exciting single version of "Ring Ring Ring" was extracted, also harbors a more interesting album concept at its heart (essentially killing the Daisy Age trend though a more sardonic view of the band's artistry). Besides, and like a lot of great hip hop albums, even the most legendary one, this debut is a little too long (even though this could be argued against *De La Soul Is Dead* as well). And sometimes, it even becomes difficult to separate the (native) tongue-in-cheek skits from the earnest cuts. Taken together, all those aspects *could* work against the idea of including the album in the list... BUT, and as said earlier, this record -- even if not as good as JB's *Down By The Forces Of Nature* or ATCQ's *The Low End Theory* -- was a small revolution in and by itself. Here were three young man breaking new ground in hip hop by refusing all the clichés associated with the genre, whether hardcore rap or commercial ditties. And of course, it's got some absolutely essential tracks: catchy "Me Myself and I", atmospheric real opener "The Magic Number", "Potholes In My Lawn", the smoooooth and jaw-dropping "Buddy" (featuring the Jungle Bros and Q-Tip from ATCQ), or "Eye Know", nicely sampling Otis Redding's whistling from "(Sitting On) The Dock Of The Bay". As for the lyrics, they are sometimes so oblique and obfuscated they (unwittingly?) become high art. Like, it looks like said lyrics are firing on all cylinders, and yet the three boys had such idiosyncratic code words and imagery, it may become a whole surreal adventure to try to make sense of it all. I hesitated to give a 4/5 grade to this one. And then I listened to the goofy skit "Transmitting Live From Mars", shrewdly sampling language lessons recorded for cassette tapes (you got to be as old as I am to understand what I'm talking about here) : "Écoutez, "à midi" Quelle heure est-il? Il est midi C'est l'heure de déjeuner Qu'est-ce qu'il y a à manger? Des saucisses, sans doute Écoutez et répétez, "à midi" à midi à midi Quelle heure est-il? Quelle heure? Quelle heure Est-il? Est-il? Quelle heure est-il? Il est midi, midi, midi Il est midi Il est midi C'est l'heure de déjeuner C'est l'heure C'est l'heure de déjeuner De déjeuner C'est l'heure de déjeuner Qu'est-ce qu'il y a à manger? Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?" Only now do I remember how that skit made me roll on the floor with laughter at the time, so absurd it is. "What is there to eat?" "Probably sausages..." (inexplicably said with a very despondent tone of voice by the French woman on the tape). Yeah, as you've probably guessed, I'm French myself. And this fond memory gives me the extra half-point I needed to include this LP in my gallery. 😀 4.5/5 for the purposes of this list of essential albums, rounded up to 5 9.5/10 for more general purposes (5 + 4.5) Number of albums left to review: around a hundred, as I've gone over the 1000 line and this generator is including albums from all editions of the book Number of albums from the list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 434 (including this one) Albums from the list I *might* include in mine later on: 257 Albums from the list I won't include in mine: 319

Amazing

Fav song: Buddy CLASSIC and ICONIC east coast hip hop for the soul (De La of course). One of my favourite genres of music of all time, and one of the all time greats, this De La Soul album has all the strengths that made hip hop in NYC so great in the late 80’s that would persist throughout the whole 90’s. Not taking itself too seriously at all, keeping its samples classy and having some bomb ass features from rappers lik le Q-Tip.. this album was never going to be anything but a 5 star from me. Added to my daily rotation of hip hop albums.

A classic that helps to define the sound and themes of a genre for years to come. Like a lot of hip hop records from the late ‘80s and ‘90s, it can feel a little bloated in places with 23 tracks and plenty of skits, but when it’s good it’s up there with the very best

Oh my god this was cool. So fun, what happened to hip hop like this?

Immense

This is easy. 7/5. Absolute Brilliance.

Such a fun album. You can tell they had fun making this one. I love the comparison of this album to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Best hip-hop album in this list so far.

One of the most fun albums I've ever listened to. There's a special energy to it you don't hear often, these guys are just having a great time and doing all kinds of crazy stuff. It was long and started to drag a little bit but then me myself and I came on and saved it. The energy is too fun to not give it a 5

amazing

THISBWAS SO GOOD

I really love the sound and the feel of this album, it sounded old yet somehow new Haven't thought about De La Soul in so long, thank you!

While I'm not sure if I'll come back to this album in the future, I can't in good conscience give this anything less than a perfect score.