3 Feet High and Rising is the debut studio album by the American hip hop group De La Soul, released on March 3, 1989, by Tommy Boy Records. It was the first of three collaborations with the producer Prince Paul, and was the critical and commercial peak of both parties. The album title comes from the Johnny Cash song "Five Feet High and Rising". The album contains the singles "Me Myself and I", "The Magic Number", "Buddy", and "Eye Know".
The album was a critical and commercial success. It is consistently placed on lists of the greatest albums of all time by noted critics and publications, with Robert Christgau calling it "unlike any rap album you or anybody else has ever heard". In 1998, it was selected as one of The Sources "100 Best Rap Albums" and in 2020 was ranked 103 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. It was selected by the Library of Congress as a 2010 addition to the National Recording Registry, which selects recordings annually that are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. As of 2023, it is the only De La Soul album to be certified platinum by the RIAA.
Along with the rest of De La Soul's back catalog, 3 Feet High and Rising was not made available for digital purchase or streaming until 2023, due to concerns about the legality of the samples for digital releases.
Musical style
Released amid the late-1980s boom in gangsta rap, which gravitated towards hardcore, confrontational, violent lyrics, 3 Feet High and Rising stood out from this trend by showcasing De La Soul's more positive style. The mirth and intelligence of De La Soul's self-presentation led many observers to label them a "hippie" group; however, this characterization was disputed by De La Soul themselves. On the album, De La Soul sought to explicitly distance themselves from gangsta rap by "lampoon[ing] emerging tropes" such as the growing materialism within the genre. Their lyrics are instead characterized by a variety of "bizarre and surreal" choices of subject matter, such as dandruff, gardening metaphors, and "Dr. Dolittle-esque interactions with animals".
3 Feet High and Rising uses a sample-heavy production style; in addition to sampling from funk and soul tracks, as was popular in the hip-hop of the era, the album also draws from sources such as doo-wop, psychedelic rock, and children's music. It has been described as "the first psychedelic hip-hop record". The album has also been noted for its use of unconventional song structures.
Artwork
The album's artwork was designed by Toby Mott's and Paul Spencer's radical British art collective the Grey Organisation (GO). In 1986 Mott and Spencer had moved from London to New York after GO's infamous paint attacks on Cork Street art galleries, where they began working as bicycle messengers. By 1989, GO were exhibiting their paintings around the East Village and working as art directors for Tommy Boy Records and MTV (among others) making music videos for various groups, such as Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, and The Rolling Stones. GO also began designing album covers for groups such as Information Society and De La Soul, most notably 3 Feet High and Rising.
The album features a recurring lyrical motif of the "D.A.I.S.Y. Age", an acronym that stands for "Da Inner Sound, Y'all". This concept also inspired the design of the album cover, as Mott describes in his essay "Hip Hop in The Daisy Age":
Group member Trugoy has stated that De La Soul was not originally interested in the flower-adorned cover that the album ultimately featured; instead, he said the group had wanted an album cover that featured "an elevator halfway up with just our faces."