The “Daisy Age”

“It wasn’t really a movement, barely even a moment, but the Daisy Age was an ethos that briefly permeated pop, R&B and hip hop. The name was coined by Long Island trio De La Soul; they claimed D.A.I.S.Y. stood for “da inner sound, y’all”, but then De La Soul said a lot of things.“

Ace Records

The so-called “Daisy Age”, or the “D.A.I.S.Y. Age”, was a period used to describe the musical and cultural trend forwarded by the New York-based hip-hop group De La Soul, who despite coining the term, mostly represented a promotional campaign around their debut album 3 Feet High and Rising, which was released in 1989. Outside of De La Soul, a number of associated acts – most of them connected to the hip-hop collective The Native Tongues were cobbled together as representing “the Daisy Age”. Indeed, a compilation album was produced of these acts and the sound of that period, which is said to have lasted between 1989 to 1991.

When De La Soul came on to the music scene in the late 1980s, there were two major things still in style in hip-hop. One of them was rappers acting like hard men (and hard women, for that matter). Other than the increasingly competitive nature of emceeing, rappers from Run-DMC to Ice-T had either cultivated a tough, fierce persona, or presented an aggressive hard-hitting sound designed to invoke a bit of edge to their presentation. Even the Beastie Boys engaged in fratboyesque hijinks, and hell even Rakim got into it on occassion. De La Soul started as three teenage friends from the suburbs who liked to rhyme with each other, and doing what they thought was fun. In this sense, it invoked some of the earliest trends of hip-hop: to have a good time, and to promote positivity. The other trend was the usage of backronyms, which by the late 1980s was a thing those involved in hip-hop culture used to show everyone how clever they are (sometimes “too clever by half”). Consider KRS-One, or Knowledge Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Everyone. Even by the 1990s, groups like the Wu-Tang Clan (who admittedly had a fondness for playing with naming conventions) used backronyms like RZA=Ruler Zig-Zag-Zig Allah, Wu-Tang = We Usually Take All (a) Niggas’ Garments or Wisdom, Understanding, The Truth of Allah and the Nation of Gods, and cream= Cash Rules Everything Around Me. When De La Soul came out, they represented the ‘daisy’, which stood for “da inner sound, y’all” – a clever play on their group name.

De La Soul were discovered by Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest who identified in the group kindred spirits and immediately told Baby Bam of them. De La Soul were then almost immediately added as part of the Native Tongues. They were then introduced to DJ wunderkind Prince Paul, who would go on to be involved in their first four albums. After securing record deal with Tommy Boy Records, they produced a series of songs for their album 3 Feet High And Rising – the title a reference to the Johnny Cash song “Five Feet High And Rising”, and indicative of the still integral component sampling was in hip-hop at the time – With Prince Paul, they created an album that was unlike anything else that was out at the time – at various times, it was mellow, fun, positive, relatable, and more importantly for music executives looking to sell to audiences in Middle America, it was consumable. Prince Paul’s innovative and eclectic sampling drawing from several songs from multiple genres of music and eccentric skits had produced a distinctive sonic experience that had turned De La Soul into overnight celebrities. However, this had led De La Soul’s sound to be described as “psychedelic rap”, and the group themselves as hippies – mostly due to “baby boomer” music executives reminded of the 1960s counterculture they experienced. This had in turn influenced the promotion of De La Soul, and the group would be involved in promotional stunts such as giving out daisies – even the iconic album cover, produced by radical art collective The Grey Organisation evoked the hippie image.

De La Soul would become increasingly frustrated with their association with hippies, and even produced a song that directly commented on this association, called “Me, Myself and I” reacting against their pigeonholing. As a general commentary, it is a fascinating case study on White America’s reaction to rap that wasn’t about dominating someone, taking on “sucker MCs”, or killing. It had to be ‘psychedelic’ and therefore, they had to be hippies. Never mind that De La Soul drew from a very different subculture emphasizing the promotion of peace, unity and harmony. “The Daisy Age” was as much an artistic period where an act would have a certain phase as David Bowie with is “Ziggy Stardust” and “Thin White Duke” eras, and The Beatles with their “Sgt. Pepper” era*. Oh, and De La Soul got sued by actual fucking hippies – the musical group The Turtles took expection to the sampling of their 1969 song, “You Showed Me” for De La Soul’s interlude track “Transmitting Live From Mars”. Apparently, Prince Paul was under the impression that their record label was on top of clearing the songs but Tommy Boy felt that Paul’s usage of the samples were so minimalistic that no-one would object. No-one but the Turtles, it seemed. The ensuing legal saga led to a reported settlement of $1.7 million. From then, a more cautious outlook on sampling in hip-hop had set in.

The Turtles episode, along with a particularly negative experience performing on the Arsenio Hall Show*, in which they were introduced as “the hippies of hip-hop” (They would perform “Me, Myself and I” – a song that explicitly has as lyrics that they are not hippies, which implied that Hall didn’t know very much of their music) and were still performing as the credits rolled, had led to the group developing a rather jaded outlook on the entertainment industry, and had pushed them to “kill the daisy” and themselves. Their contemporaries A Tribe Called Quest, Queen Latifah, Monie Love, Black Sheep and others involved in the Native Tongues had also produced sounds regarded as optimistic and positive, even if most of them were more explicitly Afrocentric. In any case, for De La Soul, while their sound and style invoked “feel-good music”, it would be a marked departure from anything like 3 Feet High and Rising, delving into darker subject matter like rape, and drug addiction for a more realistic approach. The Daisy Age was over. The De La Soul they thought they knew, was dead.

Notes:

*All things considered, they actually killed it in their performance for the Arsenio Hall Show

See also

• De La Soul
  • 3 Ft High And Rising
  • Golden age of hip-hop
• Alternative hip-hop
  • The Native Tongues
• Jerry Rubin (no real reason to add him. He’s just the kind of sellout dickhead who got all alternative lifestyle, until he found money and became a Reaganite freak like the music execs De La were dealing with)