The pop song De La Soul made for their label that felt like a “punishment”
De La Soul released one of the biggest songs of their career after the label requested a pop song. The hip-hop trio, consisting of Posdnuos, Maseo, and Trugoy the Dove, made their breakthrough in 1988 with ‘Plug Tunin’. Their label, Tommy Boy Records, was keen to capitalise on their success with something better suited to the mainstream.
So, they came up with a little number called ‘Me Myself and I’ – their highest charting single to this day. They even reached number one in the Netherlands. Released as a single from their classic debut album, 1989’s 3 Feet High and Rising, the song reached number 34 on the Billboard Hot 100 with its infectious chorus and instrumental.
Produced by Prince Paul, the song samples Funkadelic’s 1979 track ‘(Not Just) Knee Deep’. In the first verse, Dove raps, “Mirror, mirror on the wall/ Tell me, mirror, what is wrong?/ Can it be my De La clothes/ Or is it just my De La song?/ What I do ain’t make-believe/ People say I sit and try/ But when it comes to being De La/ It’s just me, myself and I.”
Despite its success, Dove revealed the song felt like a “punishment” to make. Speaking to Rolling Stone, he opened up about Tommy Boy wanting something catchy from them. Despite their feelings towards it, they made it work due to their love of George Clinton’s band. “It’s typical — the label comes and says: ‘Hey, we need one more, but we need something poppy and something familiar,'” he recalled.
As soon as they heard the Funkadelic sample, they said, “Of course we love [Funkadelic’s] ‘Knee Deep’, we could work this. This doesn’t feel like the worst punishment in the world. Let’s do this.” Dove also admitted to stealing the rhyme scheme from Jungle and Tribe’s ‘Black Is Black’ and feeling like they made a great song upon completion.
The group were glad they made it in the end, crediting the label for seeing the vision when they had no idea it would work. Still, they wondered why people gravitated towards something they saw as simple when they had other songs that they felt were more impressive.
“We didn’t have the indication or idea of commercial radio [loving it],” he explained. “The label saw that and knew they had something they could really work with. It’s a blessing. We sometimes feel like, ‘This one’s easy, this one’s nothing. Why is everybody making so much fuss about that? They need to go check out ‘Oodles of O’s’!'”
Aside from Funkadelic, the track also uses elements of the Ohio Players’ ‘Funky Worm’, Doug E Fresh’s ‘The Original Human Beatbox’, Loose Ends’ ‘Gonna Make You Mine’, and Edwin Birdsong’s ‘Rapper Dapper Snapper’. That’s some lineup of samples.
‘Me Myself and I’ became their most-played song for the next three decades, right up until Trugoy the Dove’s death in 2023. “But I’d never want it any other way,” he said about the origins of the track. “That song was special for us.”