Archive · De La Soul
Le Da Soul (20 Years of De La Soul)
By Diony C.
•July 17, 2026
•6 min read
Twenty De La Soul classics, remade by twenty different artists, one for every year since 3 Feet High and Rising. Mick Boogie and DJ Terry Urban's 2009 tribute, now streaming in the archive.
Twenty years of De La Soul deserved more than a write-up. Mick Boogie and DJ Terry Urban gave it twenty remakes instead, one classic per year, each one handed to a different artist and producer to make their own.
3 Feet High and Rising turned twenty in 2009. Mick Boogie, already established for the VH1 Honor Roll series, teamed up with DJ Terry Urban and clothing label Lemar & Dauley to build something bigger than a standard tribute mix. They pulled De La Soul’s most essential records, one from every year the group had been in the game, and put them in the hands of the artists and producers who grew up on them.
Stream the full tape in the player above.
One Classic, One Year, One Artist
The concept was simple and it still holds up. Twenty De La Soul records, twenty different hands rebuilding them.
Supa Dave West opens the tape with The Homage, an intro that carries extra weight once you know who made it. West is one of the actual producers who worked alongside De La Soul on Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump and AOI: Bionix. Having him open a tribute tape is not a coincidence. It is a co-sign from someone who was actually in the room.
From there the tape moves through the catalog in pieces. Kardinal Offishall takes on Me, Myself and I. 6th Sense rebuilds Breakadawn, The Bizness, and both parts of Stakes Is High. Fly Union flips Oooh. The Kickdrums bring Esso and Chaundon in for Say No Go. Camp Lo revisits Oodles of O’s. J Sands of the Lone Catalysts closes out the tracklist on Watch Out.
Phife Dawg raps on Pease Porridge. That single verse is worth the whole tape on its own. Phife passed in March 2016, and hearing him on a De La Soul tribute, a group he came up alongside in the Native Tongues era, is one of those recordings that means more with time than it did on release day.
Talib Kweli, Camp Lo, Kardinal Offishall, U-N-I, Tanya Morgan, Tabi Bonney, Skillz, Señor Kaos, The Kid Daytona, and Von Pea of Tanya Morgan alongside Homeboy Sandman round out the rest of the cast. Old school legends next to whoever was next up in 2009. That range was the whole point. De La Soul’s influence was not sitting in one lane or one generation, and Mick Boogie built the tracklist to prove it.
The Native Tongues Thread
De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, and the wider Native Tongues collective spent the late 80s and early 90s making the case that rap could be playful, literate, and still hit as hard as anything else out. Phife Dawg’s presence on this tape is a direct line back to that era. He was not a guest brought in for name value. He was a peer paying respect to a group that helped build the same movement he came up in.
That is the difference between a tribute compilation and a tribute mixtape done right. Everyone here has a real reason to be on it.
For the full arc of the group being honored here, read Killing the Daisy: How De La Soul Refused to Be Anyone’s Hippies, the complete De La Soul story from Amityville to Cabin in the Sky.
Watch
De La Soul — Me Myself and I (Official Music Video, 1989). The single this whole tribute is measuring twenty years against. Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammad both appear in the video, the same Native Tongues thread that runs through Phife Dawg’s verse on this tape two decades later.
From the Catalog
Every De La Soul title in the shop is documented in the full De La Soul story. Read Killing the Daisy: How De La Soul Refused to Be Anyone’s Hippies →
2xLP · 2023 Chrysalis Reissue
Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump
The chart-comeback record this tape’s era grew out of. Supa Dave West, who opens Le Da Soul, produced on it.
Shop Mosaic Thump 2xLP
2xLP · Yellow Vinyl
3 Feet High and Rising
The debut this whole tribute is counting years from.
Shop 3 Feet High and Rising
2xLP · Marble Vinyl
Cabin in the Sky
Sixteen years after this tape, the group’s most recent record. A tribute to David Jolicoeur.
Shop Cabin in the SkyThe Artists
Featured Artists
Phife Dawg
A Tribe Called Quest · Pease Porridge
Malik Taylor · 1970 – 2016
More From the Archive
This tape sits next to Dillagence, the other Mick Boogie curation in the archive, where he ran Busta Rhymes across a vault of unreleased J Dilla beats. For the wider story of how the free tape became the format that mattered, read The Evolution of Mixtape Culture.
Stream the full tape in the player above.
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