Title:Aoi: Bionix By: De La Soul Released by: Tommy Boy Records Released on: 12/04/01 Rating (out of 10): 5 Date: 01/05/2002
De La Soul Isn't Dead, But They Are On Life Support
De La Soul made rap history in 1989 with their classic Tommy Boy Records LP 3 Feet High and Rising. Fusing funky, intelligent rap with clever samples and unparalleled dance sensibilities, the album became a favorite not only with rap DJs and programmers worldwide, but also with dance club music DJs who found De La Soul’s sample-heavy, club-friendly sound to be the perfect compliment to the Chicago hip house and new jack swing that dominated the dancefloors of the era. Tracks such as “Eye Know,” “Say No Go,” and “Me Myself and Eye” brilliantly sampled Steely Dan, Hall & Oates, and Parliament/Funkadelic without really “stealing” from the original artists the way Sean “Puffy” Combs would plagiarize “Every Breath You Take” a decade later. 3 Feet High and Rising is one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed albums in Tommy Boy Records history, and is almost enough to make people forget this was the same label that gave us such vacuous acts as Information Society.
The albums that followed were increasingly poorly received, and even within their own subgenre of funky, intelligent rap, De La Soul found themselves being disregarded in favor of the more marketable A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets, and Us3. While the “Grease Theme”—sampling “A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays” (from their second album, entitled De La Soul Is Dead) as well as the later “Breakadawn” were huge club favorites, the albums from which they were gleaned failed to gain a foothold in rap circles. As a result, De La Soul found themselves being increasingly forgotten by all but their most faithful fans.
De La Soul finally had somewhat of a return to form with installment one of their Art Official Intelligence series, 2000’s Mosaic Thump, but much of the critical and commercial success of that album could be attributed to the all-star cast of special guests, including Redman (How High anyone?), Busta Rhymes, and the Beastie Boys. The newly released Aoi: Bionix, is installment two of the A.O.I. series. Featuring 18 tracks (some of which are short intros/outros or skits), Bionix is lengthy if nothing else. And it does include what sounds like it could be De La Soul’s first big hit single in ages with the infectious “Baby Phat,” which features some very skillful use of lovely background female vocals.
However, most of the CD is missing what the group’s debut LP as well as “Baby Phat” offeres in abundance: Aoi: Bionix just isn’t very fun. At its best, on songs such as “Simply Havin’,” and “Held Down,” the musical background sounds great and De La Soul seems to have captured some of their magical past. Most of the album, however, offers immediately forgettable lyrical content and concepts that are just too tedious to work effectively in the hip hop format. Tracks such as “Bionix” sound so generic they could just as easily have been performed by the gangsta rapper of your choice on a particularly cheery day. Samples and guest stars are once again here in abundance, but their effectiveness is generally minimized by placement in songs that just weren’t particularly good or catchy to begin with. One exception is the impressive “What We Do (For Love)” featuring ex-con and former rap superstar Slick Rick, perhaps the best De La Soul song in ten years and the likely second single from the CD.
Ultimately, like almost every De La Soul album that preceded it, Aoi: Bionix is suffocated by its own pretentiousness. That’s not to say that it’s totally ineffective. The R&B influenced background music sounds almost uniformly great throughout the album, and it’s clear these guys know how to compose a funky jam and are incredibly skilled rappers, but converting all that skill into musical output that is actually interesting and rewarding remains elusive for the De La Soul posse.
De La Soul has become to the rap world what Dennis Miller is to Monday Night Football...an inside joke that a few people get that leaves almost everyone else scratching their heads, wishing for something just a little less lyrically tedious. And it doesn’t help that rap music in general and funky rap in particular reached maturity years ago, making it difficult to do anything truly original in the genres since over the course of history, just about anything fresh that could be done has already been done. Twelve years later, I’m still waiting for a true follow-up to Three Feet High and Rising, and Aoi: Bionix certainly isn’t it. Maybe next time…..
