De La Soul was in Toronto last night in support of their 20th Anniversary tour of 3 Feet High & Rising. We got there just in time to catch the ending of local opener Notes To Self. They did a pretty good job keeping the crowd into it for the headliner. Never hurts to have DJ Dopey on the turntables. From what I read previously the tour was supposed to include a 10-piece band. That wasn’t the case last night. With 20 years of making music by De La Soul, lets just say we had a diverse crowd. After about 45 minutes of old school classics by the resident DJ, Maseo finally got on the stage and the crowd started to cheer. They opened with “Grind Date” to a packed house and the place was alive. They smoothly segued into “Ooh” after that with Maseo doing Redman’s parts.

The crowd was totally singing it word for word. They then performed “Ego Trippin”. This is my third time seeing De La Soul and I’ve never seen them do that song in its entirety. Well they did the damn thing ….taking the train, taking the TRAIN! From “Ego trippin”, they went into the classic “Potholes In My Lawn”. The Plugs proceeded to ask the crowd about Jay Dee. And after giving a nice R.I.P. shout out, they played “Much More” produced by Dilla. “Stakes Is High” followed that and everyone went bananas. All three plugs alternated between being on the turntables, which looked spontaneous, but their timing was perfect.

After the Dilla medley the took it back to the De La Soul Is Dead album with “Peas Porridge”, “Pass the Plugs” and “A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays”. It’s pretty crazy when the crowd is singing all your classics word for word. Then it was back to the debut, 3 Feet High & Rising, and the title track. The plugs then took a break from album cuts to freestyle over some James Brown joints, “Mind Power” and “Funky Drummer”. After a bit of Funk, Plug Two gave a small PSA on why we should be OK with Soulja Boy and the music he makes. He reminded the crowd he is still a kid and that when De La Soul dropped they faced similar scrutiny for being different. The crowd had mixed reactions on that one. No big surprise there.

The Plugs then went into “Rock Co.Kane Flow”, which was easily one of the highlights of the night. The part where stopped moving in unison to the rhythm of the break off that Jake One production is epic. They stayed frozen for about 5 minutes before exiting stage left. At this point, we’re chanting De La like crazy. They get back onstage and thank us for the 20 years of support and that Toronto might be the best crowd they’ve had yet for this tour. After that brief segment, they performed “Shoomp”, “Itzsoweezee (HOT)”, “Buddy” &  “Ring, Ring, Ring” for the last joint of the night. All in all, it was incredible show. It’s easy to forget these guys have been doing this for 20 years. Their live show is like a well-oiled machine.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 7:04 pm and is filed under Concert Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.