Hear De La Soul Embrace Hip-Hop King Status on ‘Royalty Capes’ Song
“The sky takes notes when we speak/ Our capes move with the wind ’cause of the wings beneath,” a female voice proclaims on De La Soul‘s funky new track “Royalty Capes.” The heady cut, full of thick bass and sighing saxophone, highlights the rap legends’ upcoming LP, And the Anonymous Nobody…, their first in 12 years. “Us three be the omega like fish oil,” the rappers boast in a verse.
On Facebook, the New York trio explained the song’s history, noting it was “one of the first songs recorded during early jam sessions” for the new album, out August 26th via AOI/Rough Trade Records. “Recording started at The Bomb Shelter and perfected at historic Vox Studios in LA with an unorthodox 9 bar loop of saxophone slowed down and reconstituted for Pos and Dave,” the group wrote.
De La Soul recently released the four-song For Your Pain and Suffering EP. They also teased Anonymous Nobody… by releasing two tracks, “Trainwreck” and the Snoop Dogg-featured “Pain.”
The group funded the LP by raising over $600,000 via Kickstarter. Without the pressures of a label, the rap legends were free to experiment on tracks like “Drawn,” which features indie-electronic band Little Dragon and a five-minute instrumental intro.
“We couldn’t do that on a regular label,” Kelvin “Posdnuos” Mercer told Rolling Stone earlier this year. “How you gonna present them with a song like this? They may think it’s beautiful but then it’s like, ‘Okay, so, there’s no chorus. For maybe the first three minutes of the record, you’re nowhere to be found.'”