As part of Sotheby's third 50th Anniversary of Hip Hop auction, De La Soul's Posdnuous has guest curated his selections from the sale.
See Also: Two Iconic Basquiat Pieces Set For Auction
“Thinking back to when we first fell into hip-hop culture, it feels like an eye-blink; it doesn’t feel that long ago. But seeing these show flyers or this piece of equipment or this person’s stage costume, you realize that yes, this is all so important to the culture. It’s of importance to history," he says.
The auction, in collaboration with Mass Appeal and Hip Hop 50, is open for bidding now through July 25. See Posdnuos picks and explanations below from Sotheby's and view the entire collection here:
"This one almost speaks for itself in my mind… anything related to that album just blows my mind, and this is literally the blueprint for it. That’s what all these rhyme books and these different thoughts and notes that you jot down when you’re in the process of making an album are: they’re blueprints for an album that is changing people’s lives to this day.”
"That was the era of big, black medallions. I just remember that period was a moment of real joy for us, being brand new to the music business, when everything had that fresh, new-car smell. Everything was so colorful and vivid. We were all just so happy.”
"For me, listening to music, and thinking about what that music does to you at that moment, and then being able to touch the equipment that was actually used to create it? That’s special.”
“I’ve always been a comic book person, and a lot of us hip-hop kids were. Because we were writers, too;we were young kids trying to write our own comics in our rhymes, our own adventures...EPMD being from Long Island like we were, we really looked up to them, and they helped push that feeling in us that we could do this too. So I recall feeling that way when I first saw that particular cover—how dope it looked, how they looked like they didn’t have any fear as all these weapons were being pointed at them. That image really stuck with me. ”
"We would lose ourselves in their incredible store, which had toys and statues and the weirdest stuff you can think of. The store itself was built on an actual bunker where Winston Churchill used to hide paintings during the war, and we would always find something fascinating there. And so one day [Maharishi founder] Hardy Blechman asked if we wanted to do a jacket together, and we said we’d love to, because the level of detailing they put into their products was incredible. Dave really took the lead, because he always was the visual guy in the group; he went to architecture school, he was the guy who used to cut all that cool stuff into our hair. The results kept coming back even better than we expected. But that was just a prototype, and the jacket never came out. I honestly can’t tell you why we never finished it. But seeing it reminds me of all the fun we had putting in the work to make it."
Photography by: Burak Cingi, Redferns; Courtesy Of Sotheby's
