It wasn’t really a movement, barely even a moment, but the Daisy Age was an ethos that permeated pop, R&B, and hip hop at the turn of the 90s. Playfulness and good humour were central to De La Soul’s 1989 debut album, “3 Feet High And Rising”, which would go on to cast a long, multi-coloured shadow over rap.
In Britain, the timing for “3 Feet High And Rising” couldn’t have been better. The acid house explosion of 1988 would lead to a radical breaking down of musical barriers in 1989, and its associated look – loose clothing, dayglo colours, smiley faces – chimed with the positivity of De La Soul and rising New York rap acts; the Jungle Brothers and A Tribe Called Quest, all at the heart of a growing collective called Native Tongues.
The Native Tongues’ charismatic, summery aura quickly spread west to the Bay Area’s similarly-minded Hieroglyphics crew (Del Tha Funky Homosapien’s ‘Mistadobalina’); Canada’s Dream Warriors (‘My Definition Of A Boombastic Jazz Style’) used “3 Feet High”’s colour palette and borrowed Count Basie and Quincy Jones riffs; Naughty By Nature (OPP) was mentored by Native Tongues heroine Queen Latifah, while Londoner Monie Love was also adopted by the collective, resulting in her Grammy-nominated ‘It’s A Shame (My Sister)’.
It wasn’t built to last, but the Daisy Age reintroduced Multiplication Rock, bubble writing and the gently psychedelic into the charts. It was a brief, but an extraordinarily warm and optimistic moment. The songs on this collection promised that the 90s would be a lot more easy-going than the 80s.