Weekend Reviews : De La Soul Leaves Behind the Fun in Its Rush to Rap

About half a decade ago, the music from the loose New York hip-hop coalition called the Native Tongues hit the radio--extremely young rappers, non-confrontational rhymes, and samples that ranged all over the map--and the artists seemed poised to take over hip-hop. In late 1993, the concept of the Native Tongues is probably obscure enough to qualify as a “Jeopardy” question, and hard-core rap rules.

So at the sold-out Palace on Saturday, decked out in standard-issue roughneck gear and stalking a stage bare of everything but a black-draped deejay platform, Native Tongues stalwarts De La Soul all but abandoned their trademark snide nursery-rhyme delivery in the rush to rap as quickly and aggressively as possible.

They chanted “We hate this song, we hate this song,” before they launched into a version of their biggest hit, “Me, Myself and I,” that might as well have been rapped by Onyx. Now that De La Soul is almost venerable enough to be featured on rap-radio old-school weekends, a heavy dose of the group’s one-time precocity might have been a little cloying--even rappers get to grow up if they want to--but De La Soul used to be more fun.

Former Native Tongue member A Tribe Called Quest is situated not too differently from De La Soul, but the New York group more than made up for its comparative lack of genius Saturday with its real power and build, snapping beats, a hard-edged flow characterized by sharp, bitten-off consonants and a constantly off-balance attack, and an easy, limber grace that De La Soul must covet more than anything in this world.