De La Soul have revealed a little more about their new album 'And The Anonymous Nobody'.
It's the hip-hop group's first full length release since 2004, and it was largely funded by fans through a Kickstarter scheme. The trio have responded with what they claim is their most experimental release in decades.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, De La Soul revealed that Damon Albarn, Usher and Snoop Dogg will appear on the record. Other guests include David Byrne, while The Darkness' frontman Justin Hawkins is perhaps among the album's more unexpected additional voices.
Posdnous discussed Byrne's involvement: "We were going through a bunch of stuff. Just putting stuff in what was gonna be called the trash file. And so I made I point, 'Look at this song here, we can’t rhyme with this. This sound like something Talking Heads would be on,' and it was like, DINNNNG! Wait a minute, what if we got David Byrne to do this track?'"
"(Byrne) just did this amazing just humming and scatting over the beat. He said, 'I don't have the words yet but this is what I hear… Tell me what you think.' He's asking me for my opinions?! I'm like, 'You're fucking David Byrne! You shit on the track it's good!'"
Clearly enthused about the process of making the record, Posdnous refused to compare 'And The Anonymous Nobody' to the group's own back catalogue. "I don't want to sit here and say it's another '3 Feet High and Rising', I would never say that," he explained. "But that element of not knowing what you're doing, like, it felt like '3 Feet High and Rising'. Like, we walked in, we didn't know the rules."
"We even at one point let Nas hear a bunch of tracks. And it was just dope how he was like, 'Yo man, this is like some avant-garde shit.'"
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'And The Anonymous Nobody' will be released in April.