Hip-hop group De La Soul’s member Maseo shares that new music is “definitely happening”. Despite the recent death of co-founder Trugoy the Dove, the surviving members Maseo and Posdnuos are working on their highly anticipated album AOI 3, which would complete the trilogy the band started in 2000, Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump. In 2001, they released its sequel AOI: Bionix. 

On an episode of Kyle Meredith With…, Maseo shared: “AOI 3 is definitely going to to take precedent. It’s going to be the very next thing. That’s a responsibility that we have to our fans — a responsibility we even have to ourselves — with completing that trilogy… We have a responsibility to continue on just to sustain [Trugoy’s] legacy and what we’ve built as three childhood friends, and we have a responsibility to hip-hop.”

The upcoming album will comprise of mostly newly-recorded music, despite the fact that some material was already in the pipeline long before Trugoy’s passing. “A lot of stuff is fresh,” he said. “There’s a couple of ideas I had been sitting on for a while. Nothing had lyrics on it. The stuff that had lyrics on it, we already kind of leaked it. Those three records pretty much were supposed to be a part of AOI 3. And then there’s another record that was done that we haven’t released, but I’m gonna put it on the record because it holds up. It’s a song called ‘Rise’ that we have with Yummy [Bingham]. It has a real disco rollerskating vibe, and I think that’s gonna fit really nice.” Maseo reveals.

Listen to the full interview here. (Consequence)