De La Soul’s Maseo and Posdnuos return to Long Island to discuss their earliest sessions with producer Prince Paul in an exclusive clip from the upcoming documentary, The Sixth Borough.
Directed by Jason Pollard, the film digs into the vibrant and influential history of hip-hop on Long Island, which is often overlooked compared to the genre’s storied, well-documented past in New York City. De La Soul are one of the prime examples, with the group forming while Maseo, Posdnous, and Trugoy the Dove (who died in 2023) were still high school students in the town of Amityville.
In the new clip, Maseo and Posdnous return to their alma mater, Amityville Memorial High School, with Maseo recalling the day Prince Paul, who co-produced the group’s seminal first three albums, came to the school and caught Maseo between classes. “He was like, ‘Watchu doing?’” Maseo recalls. “And I just immediately said, ‘Nothing now!’ I cut the rest of the day and I went with Paul. He was like, ‘Let’s go to your house, go get them tapes.’”
Paul was so impressed with the early demos Maseo showed him, they set up a meeting with the other members of De La Soul. During that session, Posdnous admits he was a little unsure of the producer as began tinkering with the group’s production and crafting a new sound.
Maseo then cracks of his bandmate, “He got this little twitch that only me and Dave [Trugoy] know! Because Pos is usually pretty chill. But he has these little twitches though when he’s excited or he’s upset.”
In a statement to Rolling Stone, Pollard says the clip shows “the transformation of De La Soul’s original, rough sound from their demos to the more polished sound that audiences globally would come to know them for. The catalyst behind this transformation was Producer/DJ Prince Paul, another Long Island native. Their personalities and sensibilities instantly clicked and the rest is music history.”
Along with the interview with Pos and Maseo outside their old high school, the clip also features a few archival interviews with Prince Paul. One shows him finding a sample-able drumbeat in, of all places, a novelty album from Disneyland. In the other, the producer discusses how De La Soul became an outlet for him to experiment in ways he wasn’t able to as a DJ for the group Stestsasonic.
The Sixth Borough will have its world premiere Wednesday, June 11, as part of the Tribeca Film Festival. Along with De La Soul, the film features interviews with other Long Island luminaries such as Rakim, Method Man, Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Keith Shocklee, and EPMD’s Parrish Smith and Erick Sermon.
“We are hopeful that this film gives Long Island the same amount of acclaim and respect as other places in New York,” Pollard says. “The Bronx was the birthplace of hip-hop, but the culture was transferred and transformed when it got to Long Island. This film gives Long Island its rightful place in hip-hop history by showing the generational and cultural impact of the artists that came from that area.”
The film’s producer, Andrew Theodorakis, adds, “Since the birth of hip hop music in the Bronx, where you’re from is very important. It’s a very competitive genre, and fans love to make lists of the best rappers. I noticed that Rakim and Chuck D were on the top of a lot of people’s lists, and people didn’t really know where they were from. So we wanted to tell the story of a region and how influential it was in the culture… I think that Long Island can hold its own and in most cases success over the other boroughs throughout hip hop history.”
