De La Soul Reunites With Prince Paul For “Colbert” Performance

The surviving members of De La Soul—Posdnuos and Maseo—reunited with longtime producer Prince Paul for a performance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Thursday night (March 7). The trio sailed through an entertaining rendition of “Eye Know,” which is included on the newly-released 35th anniversary edition of De La Soul’s debut album, 1988’s Three Feet High and Rising.

Wearing signature De La Soul aprons, Prince Paul, Maseo and Pos added various ingredients to the “mix”—from whistles, beets and little saxophones “approved by Kenny G” to some tiny guitars and a CD from Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen including the song “Peg,” which is sampled on the track. From there, Pos went into the first verse before delivering the second verse that was originally performed by Dave “Trugoy The Dove” Jolicoeur, who died in February 2023.

Prince Paul, who provided the sample-heavy production genius for Three Feet High and Rising as well as De La Soul Is Dead (1991) and Buhloone Mindstate (1993), was simply grateful to be a part of it.

“It’s always fun reuniting with the crew,” Prince Paul tells AllHipHop. “Dave would have been proud!”

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Pos and Maseo touched on Dave’s passing in a recent interview with AllHipHop and confirmed they were moving forward with new music. As Mase said, “The plan is definitely to step out and put my best foot forward to make AOI 3 a reality. We are definitely looking to complete that mission. Pos has other ideas that he’s trying to bring to fruition. We got the blessing of friends and family—and Dave’s family in particular— for us to keep moving forward. We were actually kind of summoned to it.

“We went to Dave’s memorial at his house, and everybody that we grew up with was like, ‘Y’all know y’all gotta keep going.’ And on so many levels I feel like we have to and, at the same time, we want to. We still got a lot in the tank.”

The anniversary edition of Three Feet High and Rising includes six bonus tracks: “Freedom of Speak (We Got Three Minutes),” the 12” version of “Jenifa Taught Me,” “What’s More,” “Plug Tunin’ (Home Demo),” “Freedom of Speak (Home Demo)” and “Ain’t Hip to Be Labelled a Hippie.” Find it here and watch the performance above.