Pls allow me to run it back, to 7-8 months ago, when I 1st heard this for the 1st time. I heard it as the track and I believe the same week they were on Joe&Jada’s couch premiering it. Pos was kicking the raps to himself, Joe ws focused as calm as Maseo’s demeanor, and Kiss truly looked blessed to be apart of hiphop.
Anytime you hear Maseo’s voice, mixed dela style, before the beat drops, the cuts, the record being manipulated,as to show us how the beat was chopped and made was as ill as only De La Soul can show up for. Pos bodies his verse. Locked in and saying what needs to said. Yeah, he also helped guide me personally, among many others, with the words he spray. In the first bars he says,
Its the birth of a team, here to clean up the turf ( the birth, team, clean, turf) is kinda crazy wtf smh
Posdnuos
and the worth of the dream, is to change the regime (thats right)
and the lean that we lay with the words that we spray ( yesir thx)
So many Mcees and artist in general feel the same about Pos, Dave, and Maseo. So to take it across the bridge, to LongIsland City\ Infamous Queensbridge projects, to feature the young god Nasty Nas, was only right.
Hearing Maseo’s voice followed by Nas brotha Jabari’s acknowledgments to them as elders, while announcing his brotha Nas, was so dope. And as usual he delivers one of his most wryly verses. So much compacted inside of the poetry, from issues in the projects, the influences it all had on hiphop, and its influence on pop culture and the unbalance of it all. How did it slip? When did the problem hatch?, When did we forget about the power of boombaphiphop? When and how can we run it back?
I give thanks for De La and Nas for this 1. They have remained 2 very long lasting professional technicians of the art form. Its always dope to see 2 legends from 2 sorta seperate eras or styles come together for liturgical hiphop the right way.
The beat was definitely groovy, definitely deftly. Shout out Dave West.
I bought the album on cassette tape. On my way to the record shop I listened to the album on my phone and hadn’t got to the track yet. I was so excited, because I already heard Nas on the albums intro, when they called class attendance. I purchased the tape “Cabin in the Sky”, and bustled back to my crib to look at it among all the other Dela shit I own.
Im still mad I let my babymom’s convince me to get rid of 2 bens of some of the illest sneakers to date smh. 1 of the bens had my Dela sneaks in it and I wish I could run it back. It wouldn’t hurt to. SMH
A few months later I got a call to be apart of there Tiny Desk concert and it sorta made up for the thrown away sneaker ben smh. I brung my albums for them to sign at the rehearsal, like the tru fan that I am. No doubt.
As we rehearsed a song off the new album,”A Quick 16 for Mama, Pos shared with me that Nas also has a verse for this song too. Wow, I thought of all the music he shared with the band, that he would share the version on Quick16 with the Nas verse, but he didn’t. Nonetheless its still one of my favorite songs off the latest album. Good song certainly. Another 1 that opens with Maseo’s signature salutary’s.
Shout out DeLa Soul.
This destined collaboration with Nasty Nas, and lyrically defining new single\video, sounds like the song for a video game soundtrack. The video was edited with the mind of a jazz photographer. Subtle visual codes, developed a solid representation of a way the song can be imagined. A combination of vibrant colorful graphic display with some real life atmosphere and profound collage inergy, that all help fuel what they wanted to convey. Job well done.
This song, this video, this moment in time, presents these pillars to us as antique legends, new ancients, with new gravitas, for us all to define what it means to RunitBack.
No Backstage Pass 