De La Soul fund new album via Kickstarter in 1 day; set to feature Damon Albarn, Little Dragon, David Byrne & more

“Thank you all for showing up and playing your part in our success of reaching the goal!! Continue to spread the word!” – De La Soul

photo: De La Soul at Irving Plaza in 2014 (more by PSquared)

Legendary rap trio De La Soul haven’t released a new album since 2004’s The Grind Date (not counting the album two members put out as fictional group First Serve in 2012), but they’re finally ready to change that. It’s called and the Anonymous Nobody, and the group launched a Kickstarter for it yesterday (3/30), and successfully funded the album in under 24 hours. It’s set to feature collaborations with Damon Albarn (who they worked with previously in Gorillaz), 2 Chainz, Little Dragon, David Byrne and more TBA. Plus, they’re allowing anyone who pledges at least $7,500 to appear on the album as well. They also talk a little bit about the recording process…

Sampling is basically copying a piece of sound, from one recording, and reusing it to create a new recording. It is how De La has always made music. The sampler is our instrument, but people who copy, and in this case “sample,” have also been considered thieves and unoriginal. So, unfortunately a huge part of our career has also been spent fighting off the “sample police.”

Enough of those battles! For the new album, we needed a completely new approach, something Hip-Hop hasn’t done before. So, here it is: For the first time, we’re going to sample ourselves.

Over the last three years, we’ve hired some of LA’s finest studio musicians and recorded them in free-styled, unrehearsed, jam sessions. They played everything from banjo to upright bass, sometimes up to a dozen musicians at once; simply allowing sounds to integrate. We did 90% of these recordings in one of LA’s most classic studios, Vox. We chose Vox because we wanted our recordings to have that creamy analog warm mixing board sound that the old records our parent’s once played had. With over 200 hours of sounds, and vibes, equal to about 250 to 300 full-length vinyl LPs, it’s time that we get to the work.

Here’s the interesting part. We are now in the process of going back to that 200+ hours of music, listening, enjoying and discovering those special moments where, musically, something magical happens, where interesting sounds and layers were forgotten, where new sounds can be sampled, looped, chopped, filtered and arranged, freely, without the intrusive presence of publishing politics and the infamous “sample police.” What we’ve done is created our own crates of records; album upon albums to mine and sample from.

Though the album’s been successfully funded, you still have 32 days to donate to it and receive exclusive rewards. More details on that here.

They also have dates coming up, including Arts & Crafts’ Field Trip Festival in Toronto. Full tour schedule below…

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De La Soul — 2015 Tour Dates
Sat 09 May 2015 Panther Island Pavilion Fort Worth, TX, US
Sat 23 May 2015 The Common Southampton, UK
Thu 28 May 2015 O2 Academy Oxford Oxford, UK
Fri 29 May 2015 O2 Academy Sheffield Sheffield, UK
Sat 30 May 2015 O2 Academy Liverpool Liverpool, UK
Sun 31 May 2015 O2 Academy Newcastle Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
Sat 06 Jun 2015 — Sun 07 Jun 2015 Field Trip Music & Arts Festival 2015 Toronto, ON, Canada
Thu 23 Jul 2015 — Sun 26 Jul 2015 Womad 2015 Malmesbury, UK