Trugoy the Dove
By 
A real giant of American music died this weekend:
David Jolicoeur, better known to music fans as Trugoy the Dove, Plug Two, or most recently simply Dave, died on Sunday at age 54. It was shocking news that meant that we had just lost one third of De La Soul, one of the great American musical groups of the past 50 years, and losing one third of De La Soul feels an awful lot like losing De La Soul itself. He is survived by fellow group members Kelvin “Posdnuos” Mercer and Vincent “DJ Maseo” Mason, but right now it is impossible to imagine the group continuing in any recognizable way without the man who first introduced himself to the world 35 years ago with the memorable lines “Dazed at the sight of a method/ Dive beneath the depth of a never-ending verse/ Gasping and swallowing every last letter/ Vocalized liquid holds the quench of your thirst.”
It’s hard to overstate the impact that De La Soul had on hip-hop music and particularly what would come to be known as “alternative” hip-hop music, a category that De La has a decent claim to having straight-up invented. De La Soul debuted in 1988 with “Plug Tunin’,” an esoteric and striking single that was recorded when all three members were still teenagers and that was produced by Prince Paul, an erstwhile deejaying prodigy previously best known as a member of Stetsasonic. In March 1989, De La Soul released their debut LP, 3 Feet High and Rising, an astonishingly creative album full of weird characters, invented lexicons, surreal skits, and brilliantly left-field samples. It was a work that, in the landscape of late 1980s hip-hop, seemed to arrive both completely out of nowhere and utterly fully formed.
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De La Soul’s follow-up to 3 Feet High reflected their growing unease with this image, clearly evident in that album’s title. De La Soul Is Dead was released in 1991, and arrived as a sprawlingly ambitious, scabrously funny work, full of sharp edges and darkened corners while still maintaining the exuberant adventurousness that defined 3 Feet High. It didn’t sell as well as its predecessor but is, to my ears, a better album: Both Pos and Trugoy have markedly improved as MCs, and Prince Paul’s beats are even more eclectic and inspired, and the skits are both funnier and much edgier. The album has a darkness that was mostly absent from the dreamy effervescence of 3 Feet High: The stunning “Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa,” for instance, is an unflinching exploration of incest and abuse, while “My Brother’s a Basehead” spins a tale of drug addiction over a sample of the 1965 Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders hit “The Game of Love.” Even ostensibly party-oriented tracks like “Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)” and “Keepin’ the Faith” brought a wry bite that suggested these young idealists had become cynics a lot quicker than anyone would have expected.
De La Soul Is Dead felt like a reset and a revitalization of the whole De La Soul project, and it liberated the group to return in 1993 with their best album yet, Buhloone Mindstate. At 30 years old, Buhloone Mindstate remains one of those sui generis masterpieces that defies categorization or even easy description: There’s live instrumentation to go along with Michael Jackson samples, righteously indignant songs about the injustices of the record industry mixed in with extensive ruminations on area codes. It’s the best album De La Soul ever made and one of the best hip-hop albums of the 1990s.
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If you’re even a casual De La Soul fan, you probably know that most of their music has long been unavailable on streaming services and digital platforms, for reasons entirely too maddening to go into here. Back in January, it was announced that an agreement had finally, finally been reached to bring De La’s 1989-2002 catalog to streaming services starting on March 3. It was wonderful news for those who love the group and have raged at the crime of their music being so stupidly unattainable for younger generations whose musical consumption is largely driven by the likes of Spotify and Apple. De La Soul made music that changed a lot of people’s lives, and soon their music will do so again. The fact that Dave Joliceur won’t be here to see that happen is too sad for words.
While I fortunately ripped the CDs into my iTunes long ago, it’s good that younger people will have easier access to their music. But it’s deeply tragic that this is how they might be compelled to check it out. R.I.P.