Buhloone Mindstate by De La Soul
Buhloone Mindstate is De La Soul's third full-length album. It was the last De La Soul album to be produced with Prince Paul. Comedian Chris Rock ranked it 10th in his list of the top 25 hip-hop albums of all time that was published in Rolling Stone in 2005. The title refers to the group's efforts to remain grounded after acquiring a name. On the album's intro, the group repeat the phrase, "it might blow up but it won't go pop", then, to end the track, they repeat the line a final time with a balloon popping replacing the word pop. They do the same at the end of "Patti Dooke". These are references to the group's refusal to change their style of music for anyone else, even if it were to become popular.
De La Soul’s third album, 1993’s <i>Buhloone Mindstate</i>, is a totem of hip-hop self-expression, the oft-quoted line from “In the Woods”—“Fuck being hard, Posdnuos is complicated”—serving as something between poetic exhale and mission statement. Enjoying a sunrise after the darkness of <i>De La Soul Is Dead</i>, the trio (on their final album with Prince Paul behind the decks) revels in the freedoms of jazz music (Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley and Pee Wee Ellis all provide support) and a border-free worldview. (“Long Island Wildin’” features rappers Scha Dara Parr and Takagi Kan, who rap in their native Japanese.) In the year of gangsta rap’s pop triumph, De La maintain a speed limit on the road less travelled, staying true to themselves in an age of sellouts (“It might blow up, but it won’t go pop”) and crime-infatuated consumers (“I be the in ’cause the brother holdin’ Glocks is out/I be the in ’cause the pusher runnin’ blocks is out”). “I Am I Be” is a landmark moment of diaristic rap writing, where Posdnuos talks about label woes, rent troubles, racist America and the dissolution of the Native Tongues crew in one powerful, metaphor-filled verse.
