Concertwire.com

At the time of its 1989 release, De La Soul's debut album, 3 Feet High and Rising, was hailed as the future of hip-hop. With its colorful, neo-psychedelic collage of samples and styles, plus the Long Island trio's low-key, clever rhymes and goofy humor, the album sounded like nothing else in hip-hop. Where most of their contemporaries drew directly from old-school rap, funk, or Public Enemy's dense sonic barrage, De La Soul were gentler and more eclectic, taking in not only funk and soul, but also pop, jazz, reggae, and psychedelia. Though their style initially earned both critical raves and strong sales, De La Soul found it hard to sustain their commercial momentum in the '90s as their alternative rap was sidetracked by the popularity of considerably harder-edged gangsta rap. In 2009, De La Soul and Nike released "Are You In?": Nike Original Run. The recording is a single-track recording at 44 minutes, 17 seconds and was made available, exclusively, through iTunes. When describing their new material, group member Posdnous said “We always think things through and put quality into anything we do ’ we never look to just take the cheque and run."