Description
De La Soul – Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump – Double Vinyl Record
Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump brings De La Soul into the year 2000 with an album that opens a new series while remaining unmistakably their own. The group's fifth studio release followed Stakes Is High and introduced the AOI project through a broad selection of songs, guests, and recurring comic passages. Posdnuos, Dave, and Maseo combine the assurance of veteran performers with their established interest in unusual connections and musical personality. This double vinyl edition presents the complete album program, including the Ghost Weed segments that form part of its original flow.
The singles provide two especially inviting points of entry. “Oooh” brings Redman into the group's world, making the exchange between distinctive MC voices central to the track's appeal. “All Good?” features Chaka Khan, connecting De La Soul's writing with a vocal presence drawn from a different but closely related musical tradition. These collaborations do more than add recognizable names. They help demonstrate how comfortably the group can work across different kinds of performance, retaining its own character while allowing a guest's personality to change the feel of a song. The album's accessibility grows out of that openness.
The wider guest lineup includes Busta Rhymes, Xzibit, Tash and J-Ro, Freddie Foxxx, and members of the Beastie Boys. Their appearances give the record the feel of a gathering, but De La Soul remain the center of gravity. Tracks such as “My Writes,” “I. C. Y'all,” and “Squat!” make the variety of voices part of the album's structure. Elsewhere, the group has room to establish its own flow and point of view. The interest lies in the movement between those settings: an outward-facing collaboration can sit beside a more self-contained performance without making the record lose its identity.
Mosaic Thump also preserves De La Soul's taste for album-level play. The “Spitkicker.com / Say R.” opening, short connecting pieces, and Ghost Weed skits make the sequence feel inhabited, with recurring ideas and comic interruptions around the songs. The closing stretch includes “Copa (Cabanga),” “Foolin',” “The Art of Getting Jumped,” and “U Don't Wanna B.D.S.” Those final tracks extend the record beyond its familiar singles and give the group room for storytelling, attitude, and direct MC performance. The result is a full-length listen whose personality depends on the surrounding details as well as the major songs.
This two-record set is a useful addition for anyone tracing De La Soul's progression from the 1990s into the next decade. It captures a group opening its circle of collaborators while maintaining the verbal and musical individuality that had made its earlier records stand out. Listeners drawn by “Oooh” or “All Good?” will find those tracks within a larger and more varied program, with the original interludes included. Mosaic Thump works both as an accessible starting point for this period of De La Soul and as a chapter in the continuing conversation among the group's three distinct personalities.
Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic
Track Listing
A1. Spitkicker.com / Say R.
A2. U Can Do (Life)
A3. My Writes
A4. Oooh / Ghost Weed Skit 01
A5. Thru Ya City
B1. I. C. Y'all
B2. View
B3. Interluden
B4. Set the Mood / Ghost Weed Skit 02
B5. All Good?
C1. Declaration
C2. Squat!
C3. Words from the Chief Rocker
C4. With Me / Ghost Weed Skit 03
D1. Copa (Cabanga)
D2. Foolin'
D3. The Art of Getting Jumped
D4. U Don't Wanna B.D.S.
