De La Soul: Smell the Da.I.S.Y. Mixtape
Hot Chip’s take on William Onyeabor, Swedish dance-pop, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch’s vampire soundtrack and more in our look at the music we tweeted this week
After releasing snippets all month, NYC hip-hop trio De La Soul dropped their entire “Smell the Da.I.S.Y.” mixtape, featuring never-before-heard beats from the late great producer J Dilla considered by many to be the most influential beatmaker of his time. The acronym—which stands for Da Inner Soul of Yancey in reference to Dilla’s birth name James Dewitt Yancey—is immediately infectious. From the first bar to the last beat, the creative chemistry between the artists is palpable. Few MCs rhyme with the effortless flow of De La Soul (who were trailblazers in the genre) and, when given a Dilla beat, better hip-hop is hard to come by.
