De La Soul: Maseo reveals true story behind 'The Art of Getting Jumped'
De La Soul is one of those iconic groups worthy of studying for years. So it’s only right when someone like the unforgettable Maseo keeps it 100 on a mind-blowing and revealing story behind how the group’s ‘The Art of Getting Jumped’ 2000 classic came together - we all pay attention.
De La Soul’s Maseo keeps it 100 on ‘The Art of Getting Jumped’
Maseo pulled through with Audacy’s Hip-Hop Made show with Mike Street and didn’t hold back on delivering an instant classic conversation. Peep the highlights below.
“Yeah, ‘The Art of Getting Jumped,’ it's a really true story. I got jumped by a Turkish gang out in Germany somewhere…. We had an off day at some club that normally everybody would go to on their off day. This happened to be our first time going to the spot; this is where Cypress Hill would go… where Ice-T would hang out when he's on tour. A lot of us who toured internationally would kind of go to the spot. This is like the first time we were going and we happened to be there around the time where there was a lot of racial tension, you know, between obviously blacks and whites, but then also the blacks and the Turkish.”
“I happened to run into an issue where they thought I was from deep Africa. They thought I was from Cameroon or somewhere. I just was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I got jumped, I got snatched into the club… My eye is all swole up and everything, and sure enough, once we got outside of the main club into the corridor area where people are coming in and out… the security there, the owner, and all of them was like, ‘yo, yo...' and all of a sudden this s*** stopped, but I still wanted to fight… because I got my a** tore up and I really wanted to fight the person who actually set it off on me… I needed some get back, but I didn't quite get it because soon as I got outside, he pulled a gun in my face and he pulled the trigger -- and the gun didn't go off.”
“So I just ran. I ran like hell yeah. God spared me. I got spared that day. The victory was in running!”
Why De La Soul’s music was unavailable on streaming platforms [01:10]: “When we did renegotiate with Tommy Boy, there was some language implemented that would be like that, that most labels started implementing after the late 80s anyway. They started to implement ‘the universe’ instead of 'the world,' you know. So, when they implemented ‘the universe,’ it made it open for mediums such as the Internet or maybe even going out into space.”
“To Tommy Boy's demise, they folded. So whatever renegotiation there was with us, it was all in breach. Once they folded -- it wasn’t like we left, they left -- so all the contracts are null and void. It was pretty much like doing a new deal for old music. (Label founder Tom Silverman) was trying to revert back to a very old contract that wasn't even the contract that we renegotiated on. Him trying to revert back all the way to ‘89 was just asinine for the business that we had continued to do. The value of what we developed to be and what we learned of our own value, that just to signing that Tommy Boy deal would have been something that would have just been done for the sake of putting the music out, and we would have been in the same kind of rut.”
When they first started [05:05]: “It didn't seem like music really presented any economic opportunity, but there was this thing happening here… We didn't have a name for it yet. ‘Hip-Hop,’ you know, and it was happening behind DJing, B-boy and break dancing, writing graffiti, lacing up your sneakers a certain way, even down to watching karate flicks. All of that played a big part of this developing culture... All these different factors that played a significant part of the culture that was very exciting, the energy that was brewing, especially for my era in particular. There was an era before us that we was watching with our uncles, you know, when this whole thing gave birth in ’73. There was a developing thing, especially if you spent time living in the boroughs, you know, and I spent a significant time living in Brooklyn before I moved to Long Island.”
Artists who got him into hip-hop and why he started making music [09:30]: “Before moving to Long Island, what gave me the inspiration to wanna go to the studio and start making records was the song ‘It's Yours’ by T La Rock and Jazzy Jay. That was the record that set it off for me to say I want to make records. Prior to that, it was all about just kind of preparing for your neighborhood party or a block party or something like that or getting up around your friends and just saying who could really be clever with the freestyle and who could really be clever with writing, tagging their name.”
Having music now available on streaming platforms & what he wants their legacy to be [18:55]: “Three guys that did it their way. To be unapologetically Black. Three Black men that stuck together, which is something that’s very rare in Black culture, period, and hip-hop in particular…”
