New Music: De La Soul's Plug 1 & Plug 2 present First Serve

A new De La Soul LP would normally be a shoe-in for a spin on this site as soon as I lock ears on it. But First Serve isn't necessarily De La as you or I might know them.

The identifiable faces of the daisy-agers, Pos and Dave, hold court on this new album, but the often erstwhile Maseo is nowhere to be seen.

Instead, the De La MCs have hooked up with a couple of French producers, 2&4 (aka Chokolate and Kahlid), to create a 'concept' album which is based on the work of real live musicians instead of samples.

A First Serve video and mix tape have come and gone, but I've not been compelled to write anything about them until today. I blame Pos' Black Eyed Peas-esque haircut which you can see above.

But while things sound a little more poppy than nomal on First Serve, there's nothing that jumps into Top of the Pops territory. Well, nothing as blatant as BEP, anyway.

Long story short: First Serve sees Pos and Dave take on alter egos of up and coming Queens rappers Jacob “Pop Life” Barrow (Pos) and Deen Whitter (Dave). The album follows the story of these alter egos as they carve out a career in the music biz.

Any alarm bells ringing at this point? Yep, me too. Concept albums can be rather boring, really (not pointing fingers at any albums in particular...okay, I'm pointing fingers).

But hats off to Pos and Dave (or should I say Jacob and Deen) for trying something different and all that. And after a quick listen to First Serve there's some decent stuff here, like 'Pushin' Aside, Pushin' Along':



I can take or leave the discoid vibe of the celebratory latest single 'We Made It' (below), but at the end of the day, it's nice to hear the De La boys in action no matter how they dress their performance up - bad haircuts and all:



First Serve is released yesterday (2 April for you Northern Hemisphere readers) online and in physical form. To get your copy, click here.