• Zip File Free Download

While hip-hop was consumed by the hardcore, noisy political rap of Public Enemy and the gangsta rap of N.W.A., Digital Underground sneaked out of Oakland with their bizarre, funky homage to Parliament-Funkadelic. Digital Underground built most of their music from P-Funk samples and developed a similarly weird sense of style and humor, highlighted by Shock-G's outrageous costumes and the whole band's parade of alter egos. Of all these alter egos, Shock-G's Humpty Hump - a ridiculous comical figure with a Groucho Marx nose and glasses and a goofy, stuttering voice - was the most famous, especially since he was immortalized on their breakthrough single, 'The Humpty Dance.' Over the course of their career, Digital Underground have featured a numerous members, but throughout it all, Shock-G has remained at their core, developing the band's sound and style, which they had from the outset, as their 1990 debut, Sex Packets, proved. Sex Packets was an instant hit, thanks the loopy single 'The Humpty Dance,' and while they never scaled such commercial heights ever again, their role in popularizing George Clinton's elastic funk made them one of the most important hip-hop groups of their era. Shock-G (born Gregory E. Jacobs, August 25, 1963) spent most of his childhood moving around the East Coast with his family, eventually settling in the Bay Area of California.

About File Formats. MP3 is a digital audio format without digital rights management (DRM) technology. Because our MP3s have no DRM, you can play it on any device that supports MP3, even on your iPod! KBPS stands for kilobits per second and the number of KBPS represents the audio quality of the MP3s. Aug 9, 2016 - After gathering fans' email addresses in an online call-out, this hip-hop trio from Long Island sent out links to zip files for its first six albums. Those albums — including its 1989 debut, “3 Feet High and Rising,” a platinum record in the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry — are some of the.

He dropped out of high school in the late '70s and spent several years pursuing a life of crime before eventually finishing his degree and going to college to study music. Along with Chopmaster J, Shock-G formed Digital Underground in 1987, and the duo released a single, 'Underwater Rimes,' that year, which went to number one in the Netherlands. In 1989, the group signed with Tommy Boy, and that summer 'Doowutchyalike' became an underground hit.

By that time, Digital Underground had expanded significantly, featuring DJ Fuze, Money-B (born Ron Brooks), and Schmoovy-Schmoov (born Earl Cook). Sex Packets, the group's debut album, was released in the spring of 1990, and 'The Humpty Dance,' which was rapped by Shock-G's alter ego Humpty Hump, climbed all the way to number 11 on the pop charts, peaking at number seven on the R&B charts.

With its P-Funk samples, jazzy interludes, and innovative amalgam of samples and live instrumentation, Sex Packets received positive reviews and went platinum by the end of the year. Digital Underground followed Sex Packets in early 1991 with This Is an EP Release, their first recording to feature rapper Tupac Shakur. The EP went gold and set the stage for their second album, Sons of the P, which was released that fall. On the strength of the gold single 'Kiss You Back,' Sons of the P also went gold, but it received criticism for its similarity to Sex Packets. By the time Digital Underground delivered their third album, The Body-Hat Syndrome in late 1993, hip-hop had become dominated by gangsta rap, particularly the drawling G-funk of Dr. Dre, which ironically was heavily indebted to Clinton. Consequently, their fan base diminished significantly, and The Body-Hat Syndrome disappeared shortly after its release.

Nearly three years later, Digital Underground returned with Future Rhythm, which spent a mere three weeks on the charts. Who Got the Gravy? Followed in 1998.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine. ORIGIN Oakland, CA. GENRE. FORMED 1987.

From left, David Jolicoeur, Kelvin Mercer and Vincent Mason of the pioneering hip-hop group De La Soul. Credit Tony Cenicola/The New York Times On Valentine’s Day in 2014, De La Soul did something surprising: The group almost all of its work. After gathering fans’ email addresses in an online call-out, this hip-hop trio from Long Island sent out links to zip files for its first six albums. Those albums — including its 1989 debut, “3 Feet High and Rising,” a platinum record in the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry — are some of the genre’s most influential and sonically adventurous, threading samples from obscure, kitschy records alongside recognizable pop, jazz and funk hooks. The links were available for a day, and the group says the response overloaded the servers hosting the music files. They also attracted the attention of Warner Music, which has owned those records since 2002, when it acquired the catalog of Tommy Boy Records, a pioneering indie hip-hop label. The attention wasn’t just because the group was giving its catalog away.

It was because those six albums have never been available to buy digitally or to stream. “We spent years and years trying to figure this out with Warner,” said Kelvin Mercer, 46, known as Posdnuos, who added that label personnel kept shifting and allies were “shuffled out” over time.

But in gathering a list of dedicated fans, De La Soul may have laid the foundation for its new record. “And the Anonymous Nobody,” out Aug. 26, is a largely sample-free affair financed by a that accumulated over $600,000 — more than a third of which was raised in eight hours, the group members say.

Zip File Free Download

Mason said they considered how much money they would earn from a record label and decided owning the album was worth more. “The faith, I would say, really kicked in when we gave away the music.” “And the Anonymous Nobody” is a drastic departure for the group. Rather than use samples, De La Soul spent three years recording more than 200 hours of the Rhythm Roots Allstars, a 10-piece funk and soul band it has toured with.

Then the group mined that material for the basis of the 17 tracks (25 musicians ended up playing on the album). From the opening horn fanfare of “Royalty Capes” to the Queen-esque metal of “Lord Intended” to the loping cowboy funk of “Unfold” (an exclusive track for those who contributed to the Kickstarter campaign), the record explores a number of genres, with extended instrumental passages.

And a wild variety of guests — Usher, Snoop Dogg, David Byrne, Little Dragon — help shift the moods. The proposed guest list was even more ambitious — Tom Waits, Jack Black and Axl Rose were also approached. “Willie Nelson kindly declined,” Mr.

Jolicoeur said. The producer Prince Paul, who worked on De La Soul’s early albums. Credit Donald Hight The album’s title, Mr. Jolicoeur said, represented part of the collaborative process. “This is about a person selflessly giving everything they could to make something cool or new or fun or better happen,” he said.

“That became the vibe of the record. It wasn’t really about a concept of the song; it was about, out of nowhere: ‘I play trumpet. I want to contribute.’” Mr. Jolicoeur said he had learned that a similar, freewheeling approach often led to the kinds of sounds the group had sampled in the past.

“When these guys from the Ohio Players to Parliament-Funkadelic were just jamming, that’s where the songs came from,” Mr. Jolicoeur said. “It was allowing something to happen organically.”. Advertisement In its third decade as a group, De La Soul is in a special position. Along with the Bomb Squad’s collaborations with Public Enemy and the Dust Brothers’ production for the Beastie Boys, its work with the producer Prince Paul resulted in some of hip-hop’s pioneering sounds, establishing the melodic and harmonic possibilities of sampling. Now the group is re-emerging with new music after 12 years, during which the genre has gone through sonic and aesthetic revolutions: Hip-hop has become, and the internet has helped coronate a new crop of blockbuster rappers.

But with the exception of “The Grind Date,” released through BMG in 2004, De La Soul has not been able to earn anything off its catalog from digital services. “We’re in the Library of Congress, but we’re not on iTunes,” Mr.

Mercer said, adding that when the group interacts with fans in person or online, they always ask the same question: “Yo, where’s the old stuff?” That old stuff — which also includes “De La Soul Is Dead” (1991), “Buhloone Mindstate” (1993) and “Stakes Is High” (1996) — may be fraught with problems, according to people familiar with the group’s recording and publishing history. In 1989, obtaining the permission of musical copyright holders for the use of their intellectual property was often an afterthought. There was little precedent for young artists’ mining their parents’ record collections for source material and little regulation or guidelines for that process. “De La Soul Is Dead” (1991) Deborah Mannis-Gardner, a sample-clearance agent who worked with De La Soul on its new record, said that lack of guidelines could be why Warner Music is keeping the catalog in digital limbo.

“My understanding is that due to allegedly uncleared samples, Warners has been uncomfortable or unwilling to license a lot of the De La Soul stuff,” Ms. Mannis-Gardner said. “It becomes difficult opening these cans of worms — were things possibly cleared with a handshake?” An added possible complication lies in the language of the agreements drafted for the use of all those samples. (There are more than 60 on “3 Feet High and Rising” alone — the group was sued by the Turtles in 1991 for the use of their song “You Showed Me” on a skit on that album and settled out of court for a reported $1.7 million.) If those agreements, written nearly three decades ago, do not account for formats other than CDs, vinyl LPs and cassettes, Warner Music would have to renegotiate terms for every sample on the group’s first four records with their respective copyright holders to make those available digitally. In a statement, a person speaking for Rhino, a subsidiary of Warner Music Group that deals with the label’s back catalog, said: “De La Soul is one of hip-hop’s seminal acts, and we’d love for their music to reach audiences on digital platforms around the world, but we don’t believe it is possible to clear all of the samples for digital use, and we wouldn’t want to release the albums other than in their complete, original forms. We understand this is very frustrating for the artists and the fans; it is frustrating for us, too.” A number of people interviewed say the legal phrase “now known or hereafter discovered” may determine De La Soul’s digital future. It ensures that samples cleared in the past are legal for use on streaming services and for digital music retailers.

Advertisement “It’s tricky because someone could deny the sample use now, or negotiate high upfront advances, maybe even higher percentage or royalty than was originally negotiated, which lessens what the label can earn,” she said. “Before, people were like, ‘Oh yeah, whatever you want to do, we don’t even know what you’re talking about, sampling, who cares, whatever.’ Now, it’s like, ‘Wow, that’s a big piece of real estate.’” Ms. Bayer added that people are still filing copyright claims on samples from De La Soul’s early records.

“Two songs from the first album just came up that had never come up before,” Ms. “I think when Warner got the catalog, I think people started making claims, people were kind of coming out of the woodwork going, ‘Oh, well now it’s a major label involved, and we can possibly get more from them than we might have gotten from an independent label like Tommy Boy.’” But others, including Paul Huston, the producer known as Prince Paul, who worked closely with the group on its first three albums, say they did their due diligence. “Sampling was obviously new, but we were told, ‘Hey, here’s some sample-clearance forms — you have to fill these out,’” Mr.

Huston said, adding that Tommy Boy became much more careful after the success of “3 Feet High and Rising.” “It got to the point where it was like, ‘What is that scratch!?’” Photo. “Stakes Is High” (1996) Tom Silverman, the founder of Tommy Boy Records — which also put out albums by Digital Underground and Queen Latifah — said that making the group’s catalog available digitally would not be difficult, considering that Warner Music should know the copyright holders who have been receiving royalties for the physical sales of the records.

Silverman said: “Cutting a deal, you would think, to give them more money, shouldn’t be that hard, especially if you’re fair and logical and say, ‘Let me pay you the same percentage that we’ve always paid you on physical on digital, too, so you can make that much money.’ So it doesn’t really make a lot of sense that they’ve haven’t even tried.” For De La Soul, Warner Music and the owners of the copyrighted samples, the catalog’s absence from digital media can be felt in an absence of income. That money would have come from downloads (the iTunes Music Store opened in 2003); streaming; ringtones (Mr. Silverman points out the group’s 1991 single “Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)” as a potential ringtone windfall); and deals with television, movies and advertisers. “Buhloone Mindstate” (1993) Lonnie Lynn, the rapper known as Common who has appeared on De La Soul albums, said the lack of a digital presence is a blow to available hip-hop history. “It’s obviously disappointing, because I feel like De La is timeless music, and I feel like there’s a 16-year-old that would find De La and be like, ‘Aw, man, that’s cool.’” The group says it volunteered to bear the administrative burden of making the catalog available but that Warner Music was not interested. Jolicoeur acknowledges the potential task Warner faces is “a lot of work,” but Mr.

Mason argues the time to do that work is now. “When I try my best to tap into the psyche of record execs and how they think, they know there’s some value — that’s why they’re not letting go,” he said. “But on this side of the fence, you’re like, ‘I’d appreciate you don’t wait until one of us die to do this.’ Can I enjoy some of the fruits of my own labor, while I’m alive?

Obviously, we’re in the music industry — more people are more valuable dead than alive, you know? Can we change that landscape?” “It really financially hurts these guys,” Ms. Mannis-Gardner said. “If Warners won’t license it, perhaps they could sell it back to the band members.” Mr. Huston said that several independent labels had approached him about releasing these records but that interest fizzles when he directs them to Warner Music.

“It’s like almost when you’re a kid and somebody says, ‘Hey, can I borrow your bike?’” he said, laughing. “And it’s like, ‘I don’t know, my mom won’t let me; you can ask my mom,’ and they go: ‘Ohhh, that’s all right. I don’t need to borrow it.’”. Advertisement Mr. Silverman, who still runs Tommy Boy, hopes to obtain his label’s entire back catalog from Warner Music, and making De La Soul’s disputed albums available digitally is the first thing he said he would do.

“They’ll be making a lot more money when that stuff becomes available,” he said. “Not the download part, the streaming part. It’s like they missed the entire era of downloads.” Given the success of its Kickstarter campaign, De La Soul hasn’t ruled out turning to crowdfunding to free its catalog. “Maybe that’s what’s next,” Mr.

Jolicoeur said. “This music has to be addressed and released. But somewhere it’s going to happen.”.