De La Soul Announce Their Catalog Will Finally Come To Streaming Services Later This Year

De La Soul have revealed that their music will finally be coming to streaming services later this year. The group went on Instagram Live on Tuesday afternoon to make the announcement official.

Talib Kweli first broke the news on Saturday night via an Instagram post. “After years of being taken advantage by the recording industry in the worst possible ways, De La Soul now owns all the rights to their masters and is in full control of the amazing music they have created,” Kweli wrote in that post. “Let’s salute Plugs 1, 2 and 3 for sticking to their guns and showing us that we can all beat the system if we come together as a community. Let’s hear it for black ownership of black art!”

De La Soul’s first six albums, everything from their 1989 debut 3 Feet High And Rising through 2001’s AOI: Bionix, have long been unavailable on streaming services. A planned 2019 release was put on hold after the trio spoke out about the label’s unfair royalty terms and their flippancy over sample clearance issues. But earlier this year, the Tommy Boy catalog was acquired by the music rights company Reservoir, who proceeded to tell Variety that they had reached out to De La Soul and “will work together to the bring the catalog and the music back to the fans.”

“We have finally come to a deal between ourselves and Reservoir Media to release our music in 2021,” the group’s David “Trugoy” Jolicoeur said during the their Instagram Live. He mentioned that “there’s a lot of back work that needs to be done” but that the expected release date is in November, on all streaming platforms.