De La Soul offers entire catalog for free download

De La Soul is spreading a lot of love to its fans.

In honor of the upcoming 25^th anniversary of its landmark debut, “3 Feet High and Rising,” the groundbreaking alternative hip-hop trio is offering a sweet Valentine’s Day gift: its entire discography for free.

The group is allowing fans to download one, or all, of its albums via its official website.

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The catch? The music is available for only 25 hours and requires a subscription to De La Soul’s email newsletter. Not bad, considering the bounty of free, and legal, music up for grabs.

“It’s about allowing our fans who have been looking and trying to get a hold of our music to have access to it,” De La’s Posdnuos told Rolling Stone. “It’s been too long where our fans haven’t had access to everything. This is our way of showing them how much we love them.”

The Long Island trio has long been revered for its eclectic sampling, but this has also hindered it from making the work available in the digital space due to the abundance of clearance issues. Issuing the music for free is an easy workaround.

In the interview with Rolling Stone, Posdnuos said frequent personnel changes at record labels and murky language in early contracts have added to the hurdles in clearing the group’s catalog.

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Only 2004’s “The Grind Date” is available for sale on iTunes and streaming on Spotify, and because it’s already available to fans, it’s not included in the free grab.

“It’s been a trying journey,” Posdnuos added. “We’ve been blessed to be in the Library of Congress, but we can’t even have our music on iTunes. We’ve been working very hard to get that solved.”

Because so many people are smartly taking advantage of the offer – De La trended on Twitter much of Friday – download links can take up to an hour to arrive in inboxes (I got my links in 40 minutes). Fans have until early on Saturday to snap up the music.

The group included a batch of photos and archived goodies from an in-the-works book as an added bonus.

The catalog release is just the beginning. De La Soul is prepping “You’re Welcome,” its first album in a decade. The album is expected to arrive before summer, and an EP, “Premium Soul on the Rocks,” is set for March.