After 50 Years of Hip-Hop, It's Time to Legalize the Idea at Its Core

This week marks the release, at long last, of De La Soul's 1989 debut album 3 Feet High and Rising on music streaming services, along with most of their vital early catalog. It is, for fans of a certain generation, a bittersweet moment, coming as it does on a wave of grief over last month's sudden death of member Dave "Trugoy" Jolicoeur. It's hard to overstate the importance of 3 Feet High and Rising as an inflection point in the growth of hip-hop. The group's eccentric, bohemian aesthetic was a big reason that the genre's cultural tent expanded over the years, allowing more people to find their place within it. Crucially, the album's sound, sculpted largely by their producer Prince Paul, changed our expectations about what music itself could be: 24 riotous tracks--well-crafted songs interspersed with anarchic skits--made from hundreds of digital samples of sound from existing records.