HOW THE NATIVE TONGUES ALTERED THE LANDSCAPE OF HIP-HOP

The invitation to “The D.A.I.S.Y. Experience” March 2 at New York’s Webster Hall promised 333 fans the chance to celebrate “the life and legacy of Dave aka Plug 2 and De La Soul.” There may actually have been that many people onstage that night to support Kelvin “Posdnuos” Mercer, De La Soul’s sole surviving rapper, and DLS DJ Vincent “Maseo” Mason.

Queen Latifah, Q-Tip, Busta Rhymes, D-Nice, Grandmaster Flash, Dave
Chappelle and those hundreds of fans came out to mark the release, at long last, of De La Soul’s catalog onto streaming services after years of legal entanglements.

But Posdnuos’ partner in rhyme—Dave “Trugoy The Dove” Jolicoeur—had died, at age 54, mere weeks before this party to honor his groundbreaking group. Thus “The D.A.I.S.Y. Experience” had also become a memorial.

De La Soul helped redefine rap music during its golden age, both in terms of what types of creative expression were allowed and who was allowed to create those expressions. A product of suburban Long Island, its music spoke from a geeky perspective packed with inside jokes and eclectic references that made space for bohemians in a rap arena largely populated by gangstas and ghetto superstars. But they weren’t alone.

“We met Jungle Brothers at a gig we did,” Trugoy told me a month before his death. “They’d performed ‘Jimbrowski’ at the show. We were, like, ‘We got this idea to do a song called “Jenifa” in response to “Jimbrowski.” Are y’all cool with that?’ They said, ‘Yeah, it’s all cool. We got a gig in Queens coming up next week―why don’t y’all come through?’ That’s where we met Q-Tip. Our recording sessions were always, like, whoever’s there is gonna be involved. Over time, the relationships just got closer.”

These connections sparked the formation of the hip-hop collective known as the Native Tongues. Consisting primarily of Jungle Brothers, De La Soul and the Tip-fronted A Tribe Called Quest (and an extended membership that included Queen Latifah, Monie Love, Black Sheep and Fu-Schnickens), the Native Tongues never released a joint album. But the group’s Afrocentric, left-of-center aesthetic set it apart as a bona fide hip-hop movement during the late 1980s and early ’90s, one that would eventually influence Odd Future, Kanye West, Outkast, Black Star and countless others.

Call up New Birth’s 1972 funk track “African Cry” on your streaming service of choice and you’ll hear brothers Leslie and Melvin Wilson sing of the transatlantic slave trade: “Shipped and shackled, chained and feared / Took away our native tongue.” According to the 2011 documentary Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest, Q-Tip borrowed the collective’s sobriquet from this ’70s deep cut to designate its idealistically creative member acts, which had formed a fast friendship by 1988.

That was perhaps the banner year of hip-hop’s golden age. Still essentially under the radar, its young fan base a subculture of insiders, hip-hop in 1988 saw the release of seminal albums by Public Enemy, N.W.A, Slick Rick, EPMD, Big Daddy Kane, Salt-N-Pepa, Rakim, KRS-One, Too $hort and Will Smith, to name a few. This flowering corresponded to a cornucopia of approaches to expressing the experiences of young Black America.

Entering the fray with boom-bap singles like “Straight Out the Jungle” and “Because I Got It Like That” that halcyon summer were Jungle Brothers Afrika Baby Bam, Mike G and DJ Sammy B.

We were certain Jungle Brothers had raided Banana Republic for their multi-pocketed khaki vests and chin-strapped safari hats. They’d managed to carve out a discernable style no cornier than Run-DMC’s fedoras or the Gucci knockoffs purveyed by Harlem designer Dapper Dan. Their musical modus operandi was just as distinctive: Over samples of Funkadelic, James Brown and Sly & the Family Stone, Jungle Brothers tackled everything from Black-nationalist sentiment (“Black Is Black”) to playful sexual metaphors (“Jimbrowski”) with the same imaginative energy.

Brooklyn’s fair-skinned Afrika Baby Bam, born Nathaniel Hall, adopted his moniker from Universal Zulu Nation founder Afrika Bambaataa. Michael Small and Sammy Burwell—aka Mike G and Sammy B—both hailed from Harlem. The former’s famous uncle, seminal New York Kool DJ Red Alert, managed his nephew’s nascent group through his newly launched Red Alert Productions, scoring them a deal with indie label Warlock Records.

With 1988’s Straight Out the Jungle, Jungle Brothers planted a flag for hip-hop fans whose minds were also being opened by like-minded acts like Public Enemy, sporting leather medallions of the African continent instead of thick gold necklaces (see Run-DMC/Big Daddy Kane) and casting a sympathetic gaze toward the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.

Unbeknownst to most observers of the scene, Straight Out the Jungle also planted the seed of the Native Tongues. “Black Is Black” featured the first appearance of the former MC Love Child, a Queens teen renamed Q-Tip by Afrika Baby Bam. “Jimbrowski” not only spurred De La Soul’s aforementioned “Jenifa” but the 1988 Boogie Down Productions’ companion song “Jimmy” (“Jimbrowski,” by the way, was a euphemism for male genitalia; “Jenifa” was a reference to female genitalia; Jimmys were condoms.)

Meanwhile, in Amityville, a newbie MC whose nom de rap was Posdnuos (“sound sop” spelled backwards) rapped, “Flowing in file with a new style / Barrels are cleaned and loaded for salute.” His partner, whose handle seemed to be JD Dove, offered, “Different in style is definite / And style which I flaunt is sure legit.” They rhymed over a sprightly, nostalgic-sounding sample of “Written on the Wall,” a 1965 track by The Invitations (with drums from the equally obscure ’70s funk band Manzel’s “Midnight Theme”). The embryonic act’s “Plug Tunin’,” from June 1988, was inspired by the complex verse construction and expansive vocabulary of Ultramagnetic MCs. This incarnation of hip-hop’s “alternative” possibilities called itself De La Soul.

Pos, Trugoy (“yogurt” spelled back-wards) The Dove and DJ Maseo (real name Vincent Mason) knew one another from high school. The trio believed that a record deal was an achievable goal thanks to another local kid made good: Paul Huston, aka Prince Paul, already a member of the
Brooklyn hip-hop band Stetsasonic. After producing De La’s demo for “Plug Tunin’” and its follow-up, “Potholes in My Lawn,” the playful rap vet became the trio’s own George Martin—an unofficial fourth member whose presence reveals itself in the eclectic samples and richly comedic, allusive sensibility of the masterworks 3 Feet High and Rising (1989), De La Soul Is Dead (1991) and Buhloone Mindstate (1993).

3 Feet High bore a yellow Day-Glo cover (hot pink on the back) decorated with flowers, twice as many tracks as the average rap record and song segues in the form of dweeby skits. The members of De La sculpted their fades into layered, asymmetrical works of art. Contemporaries of N.W.A and Too Short, they did not wear The Mack on their sleeves, however; they were fans of quirkier films like Bloodsucking Freaks. On their biggest hit, “Me Myself and I,” the trio insisted they weren’t hippies―while wearing peace-sign necklaces and daisy-printed shirts (see also “D.A.I.S.Y. Age,” in which “D.A.I.S.Y.” stood for “Da inner sound, y’all”). But the very notion that Black hippies could operate within hypermasculine hip-hop was unthinkable until De La Soul’s arrival.

It can be argued that the Native Tongues owes something to the world-building of Marvel, DC and other comic books. Among the many identifying characteristics that have forever made comics so appealing to young folks is the crossover appearance―once upon a time, the idea that superheroes exist in the same universe seemed mind-blowing. Populated by teenagers creating their own outsized personas, hip-hop grabbed the baton from crossover-event books like The Uncanny X-Men and The New Teen Titans in 1989 when De La Soul dropped its third single; taking Jungle Brothers’ Q-Tip-enhanced “Black Is Black” a step further, “Buddy” featured Jungle Brothers with Queen Latifah, Monie Love and Q-Tip. The remix appended Tip’s partner, Phife Dawg. A music video welcomed Bronx rapper Chi-Ali.

“I think what locked us in was recording ‘Buddy,’” says Dave Jolicoeur in the Kickstarter trailer for the as-yet-unfinished documentary Speaking in Tongues: Legends of the Native Tongue Posse. “We were already family, and all we did was make a name,” adds Pos. “The name became bigger than us.”

Building on the fans’ love of the Native Tongues’ particular creative bent, the collective’s most commercially successful act made its album debut in 1990. I was there at the birth and the death and the rebirth of A Tribe Called Quest. As a college sophomore, I stood in the sweaty audience at downtown Manhattan’s Sound Factory when ATCQ played there after the release of People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. Eight years later, I sat in a Jive Records conference room with Q-Tip and DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad―Phife was on speakerphone―for the interview that announced their breakup. And we reunited for the last time at a SiriusXM studio when Tribe came together again 18 years later for its final album, 2016’s We got it from Here…Thank You For Your service. (Phife Dog died, at age 45, before it was released.)

Producing People’s Instinctive Travels, Q-Tip mined the 1970s for jazzy samples by Lonnie Liston Smith, Roy Ayers, Weather Report and other artists the 19-year-olds of 1990 weren’t really supposed to know. A Tribe Called Quest presented themselves in patterned dashikis with those swinging leather medallions of Africa. Lovers, not fighters, Tip and Phife didn’t pretend to murder gangstas; they lusted after “Bonita Applebum.” As was the case with De La Soul and Jungle Brothers, peace and love found their way into the quartet’s material without sounding uncool. The Native Tongues never seemed dangerous; they seemed like me―me and a million rap fans just like me.

The collective was also trailblazing in that it represented female fans, too. Queen Latifah entered pop culture in autumn 1989 as a fierce MC on her debut album, All Hail the Queen. Its standout single, “Ladies First,” quickly reached the status of feminist anthem with the help of London-born rapper Monie Love. Both were quickly adopted by the Native Tongues. De La Soul appeared on Latifah’s “Mama Gave Birth to the Soul Children,” and Afrika Baby Bam produced much of Love’s debut, 1990’s Down to Earth.

In retrospect, a bump in the road was inevitable. Posdnuos publicly revealed a Native Tongues rift in 1993 on “I Am I Be”: “Or some tongues who lied and said, ‘We’ll be natives to the end’ / Nowadays we don’t even speak.” Discussing the song recently, Pos said, “At that moment in time, Q-Tip and I actually had an issue with each other. But now, honestly, I wish I wouldn’t have done that. That was something we got over. It was hard for us to get over it, though, because the world was gonna listen to it for the rest of their lives.”

An equally dissected moment arose three years later when Pos announced on “Stakes Is High”: “The Native Tongues has officially been reinstated!” But A Tribe Called Quest disbanded in ’98. Jungle Brothers never reclaimed the heights of 1988’s Todd Terry-produced “I’ll House You.” And again, though unofficial compilation records like Rhymes, Remixes and Rares do exist, an actual Native Tongues album never came to pass despite members’ appearing on sporadic remixes like N.E.R.D’s “She Wants to Move (Native Tongue Remix)” (featuring De La Soul and Tip as well as Common and Mos Def).

Having navigated the tricky transition from teenage nonconformists to hip-hop elder statespeople, various Native Tongues surrounded Posdnuos onstage at Webster Hall that night in March—the loose assemblage’s legacy now firmly cemented in the culture’s history. As daisy-shaped balloons dropped from the ceiling at midnight, Pos basked in the love emanating from Q-Tip, Monie Love, Afrika Baby Bam, Queen Latifah, Mike G and a rap yearbook of other, lesser-known golden-age MCs.

The innovations of the Native Tongues posse continue to reverberate in the work of Tyler, The Creator, Childish Gambino, Travis Scott and anyone else pushing the envelope of the genre in its modern-day manifestation. And now that De La Soul’s catalog is at long last also available to stream, a new generation is able to delve fully into some of the most inventive recordings in hip-hop history.