On November 21, De La Soul’s surviving members, Kelvin “Posdnous” Mercer and Vincent “DJ Maseo” Mason, shocked fans by denouncing Marcus J. Moore’s new biography, High and Rising: A Book About De La Soul across their social media accounts. “We’ve been receiving congratulatory messages about a book titled ‘High & Rising,’” read the posts. “However, we want to make it absolutely clear: this is an unauthorized book, and we are not connected to it in any way.” The post went on to say, “If you choose to support this book, that’s your right. We just want it to be clear that we do not and we are exploring all of our legal options.”
De La Soul insinuates they were blindsided by High and Rising’s publication on November 19. But in the book, which Harper Collins imprint Dey St. promotes as “the first-ever book about the trio,” Moore writes that he interviewed several onetime De La collaborators like the Jungle Brothers and DJ Premier but “the group didn’t participate.” (High and Rising may be the first major biography about the group. But a critical biography published by J-Card Press, De La Soul by Dave Heaton, preceded it in July.) Throughout High and Rising’s 200-plus pages, Moore not only writes about the Long Island trio’s history from a critical and cultural perspective, but also weaves in personal reminiscences of fandom, from hearing “Potholes in My Lawn” as an eight-year-old to interviewing the group in 2016. Moore finds solace in their music as he mourns the death of his mother, and closes with a heartfelt open letter to Dave “Trugoy the Dove” Jolicouer, who died on February 12, 2023.
Moore has contributed to Rolling Stone, among many other publications. In 2020, RS listed his first book The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America as one of the best music books of the year. He’s currently an adjunct professor at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. When asked for comment, a spokesperson for Harper Collins responded, “Marcus J. Moore prefers not to give more life to the De La Soul reaction to the book, etc., and thus will take a pass on this interview.” In a Forbes profile, he discussed High and Rising’s unique mix of musical history and autobiography, explaining, “Ultimately, we only get one crack at this thing (life) and I didn’t want to present a book that was overly cryptic for no reason. Who wants an overly scholarly De La Soul book? Those guys were fun.” Representatives for De La Soul could not be reached for comment.
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De La Soul’s unexpected broadside against High and Rising drew plenty of online condemnation. “As critics and journalists, we are accustomed to seeing our work criticized and questioned. To see artists (or their estates) attempt to equate unauthorized with libel is fucked up…but it’s also incredibly dangerous,” wrote longtime music journalist Gerrick Kennedy on Twitter/X.
Tensions between journalists and rappers have often flared since hip-hop came of age in the late Eighties, when the mainstream media’s frequent distortions of the genre inspired righteous pushback like Public Enemy’s “Don’t Believe the Hype.” In the Nineties, critical magazine reviews and articles led to threats of violence or worse. Old heads of a certain age still gossip about when Masta Killa of Wu-Tang Clan sucker-punched Cheo H. Coker over a 1994 article in The Source. (Decades later, Masta Killa denied the incident took place.) Such conflicts seem rooted in misunderstanding, leading rap artists – many of whom rose out of impoverished circumstances – fearful over whether adverse publicity can damage their livelihood to (wrongly) lash out.
Those old-school confrontations echo in the way A Tribe Called Quest denounced actor-director Michael Rapaport’s 2011 documentary Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest for including heartbreaking fights between Q-Tip and the late Phife Dawg; and how Lil Wayne tried to sue Adam Bhala Lough over the 2009 cult doc The Carter, ostensibly over its raw scenes of substance abuse. But recent years have marked a subtle shift from self-righteous battles over reputation to less principled conflicts over branding control, like when Kanye West disowned his participation in Coodie & Chike’s 2022 documentary Jeen-Yuhs because he was denied final cut. This reflects an environment in which celebrities demand production credit and veto power over any content they’re involved in, journalistic integrity be damned.
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In the hip-hop literary world, the closest precedent to De La Soul’s complaint against Moore’s High and Rising may be Paul Cantor’s 2022 book Most Dope: The Extraordinary Life of Mac Miller. Even before it was finished, the late rapper’s mother, Karen Meyers, warned on Instagram in 2019, “To artists, management & friends: there is a writer doing a Mac Miller biography… We are not participating and prefer you don’t either if you personally knew Malcolm.” Then, when Most Dope was made available for pre-order in May 2021, Myers directed fans to ignore it in favor of a biography authorized by Mac Miller’s estate, Donna-Claire Chesman’s The Book of Mac. “[Cantor] chose to proceed against our polite insistence that he not do disservice to Malcolm’s legacy through writing a book without legitimate primary sources,” she wrote in a separate post.
The negative publicity Mac Miller’s estate generated around Most Dope turned Cantor into a target of the beloved rapper’s fanbase. “They sent me death threats, called me names, and accused me of all sorts of things… Trolls bombarded sites like Goodreads, Barnes and Noble and Google Books, leaving one-star reviews and comments disparaging me and my book – despite having never read a single word of it,” Cantor later wrote. “How did writing a simple biography turn into something so toxic? The whole situation drove me into a crushing depression.”
So far, De La Soul’s social media post hasn’t generated a similarly venomous overreaction: High and Rising currently enjoys a 4.03 rating on Goodreads. However, it betrays similar illusions that books are just another form of intellectual property that an artist should benefit from. “For years, you’ve stood with us in our fight for ownership of our catalog,” writes the group, referring to their years-long struggle over streaming rights. “Our story will be told in our words, in our way, with the style you’ve come to know and love. Until then, we encourage you to indulge in the authentic D.A.I.S.Y. Age by supporting projects backed by us.” They then hint at a spring 2025 release date for “that authentic ‘De La’.”
But Moore isn’t denying De La Soul due profits from intellectual property. He’s commenting with loving criticism on a musical ensemble whose words, images, and creativity impacted generations of lives, including his own. Writers should be allowed to observe, critique, and analyze the world around them, regardless of the intellectual merit of their conclusions. A veiled threat of a lawsuit against High and Rising runs not only contrary to U.S. fair use copyright laws, but also threatens to diminish the spirit of communal joy and moral responsibility that De La Soul has so wonderfully conveyed through their art.
