De La Soul's Buhloone Mindstate Is The February Rap & Hip-Hop Album

De La Soul are a seminal early-90s rap group; they defined, for a lot of rap heads, what a rap group should be like, and helped bring the jazz-rap of the Native Tongues collective to the mainstream thanks to their first big hit, "Me, Myself and I." De La Soul’s first two albums--3 Feet High And Rising and De La Soul Is Dead--were masterpieces in form and execution; the storytelling was inventive and the sampling by producer Prince Paul created the gold standard of an artform.

Those first two albums are generally considered the group's most classic, but the group’s third LP, Buhloone Mindstate, with its jazzier palette and subtle emphasis on the groove, has ended up an unduly underrated gem not only De La’s catalog, but in the story of ‘90s rap in general. It’s soulful, features biting critiques of the other rap music of the time (“Ego Trippin (Part Two)”) and collaborations with jazz greats like Maceo Parker, and is a testament to the lyrical greatness and vocal interplay of Posdnuos, Dave and Maseo. No self-respecting rap fan’s collection is complete without it.

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This is the part where we usually direct you to the album on Spotify, but Buhloone Mindstate is not on there due to some rights issues. The album has been functionally out of print on vinyl since 1993, so this reissue under Rap & Hip-Hop is a big deal for fans of De La trying to complete the set of their albums on vinyl.

You can hear pieces of the album on YouTube, but here's a song that's enough to make anyone want to own Buhloone: "Ego Trippin' (Part Two)." Enjoy this till that De La album arrives in your mailbox.