Keeping it short because I need sleep. Awaiting a blizzard by the time I rise. Heathen D would make a great gift for someone in your life who you feel needs to know about music, so keep forwarding these around and keep subscribing. Twice a week, without fail, you’re gonna get something from me that, like love, will turn you around.

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DE LA SOUL Cabin in the Sky 2xLP (Mass Appeal)

Down to a duo following the monumental loss of Dave “Trugoy” Jolicoeur, De La pull off a 10th album, nine years after the largesse of the last one And the Anonymous Nobody..., and proof that these guys need to keep the distance between efforts a little tighter. This one absolutely throws back to D.A.I.S.Y. Age AM radio/dusties beats, the harder edges that formed around Stakes Is High, and a good number of the performers and producers that came up around and beyond them. About half the record is given to collaborations with the latter, posse cuts and guest spots with Nas, Common, Black Thought, Q-Tip, Slick Rick and Killer Mike, with Primo and Pete Rock beats strewn about (the best being “The Package,” with Pete cutting up two copies of the Impressions’ “Seven Years” and finding new dimensions within), and everything’s working in their favor. As their chance to remember Dave, Cabin in the Sky shows in the most pressing ways how he’s still with Posdnous and Maseo, and inseparable from their music, even in passing. Moreover, it’s a joy to hear them back in the stance of an era they more or less created.

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