With a handful of quite strange gigs on the horizon, legendary American Hip Hop Trio De La Soul have chosen to take their gigs from the more niche cuts of British venues – like Magazine on the Greenwich Peninsula, and Bristol’s Marble Factory – to none other than London’s Royal Albert Hall. Set to take place on April 8th 2023, the gig marks the group’s first headline show at the Royal Albert Hall to date. Tickets to the show go on sale to the general public tomorrow morning (Friday, April 1st) at 10am. You can try for yourself here, and check out any other dates on their tour here.
While this is the group’s first time headlining the Royal Albert Hall, the trio did, however, take a shot at the legendary venue back in 2014, when they came out as a special feature for Gorillaz to perform their hit single “Feel Good Inc.”. Clearly, the taster was enough to convince them that a night at the Royal Albert Hall could be one to remember, you can watch some fan footage of the performance below.
While it has been a few years since De La Soul last released some new material, with 2016’s and the Anonymous Nobody… receiving pretty good critical and commercial acclaim, as well as a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Album, they are appearing reasonably consistently on other artist’s work. Most recently with an appearance on another Gorillaz track, “Momentz” from their 2017 album Humanz, and a single from Tom Misch “It Runs Right Through Me”. In an interview with Billboard back in 2019, there was a loose idea for some new music to be released with production help from Pete Rock and DJ Premier. There has since been no real updates on this project though.
De La Soul have also been floating around the zeitgeist recently after becoming another significant artist to dispute royalty splits between artists and streaming companies. Their catalogue was purchased by Tommy Boy Records back in 2017, and in 2019 it was announced that their music would finally find itself on streaming services. This idea was delayed, however, when the group, rightfully, decided they weren’t happy with a 10% cut of what would already be a meagre sum of money from the services. So, the plans were essentially scrapped until 2020 when Rostrum Records tried to but Tommy Boy Records to give the masters back to De La Soul. Big News. Cut to the present day, and the group’s music has made its way onto all the usual suspects after Tommy Boy was, in fact, purchased by Reservoir Media. Finally!
