“Welcome to the Daisy Age”: Uncovering the Legacy of 3 Feet High and Rising

Both visually and sonically, De La Soul’s 1989 debut album 3 Feet High and Rising marked an evolution of hip-hop as we knew it. In an era dominated by gritty, hypermasculine imagery, 3 Feet High and Rising’s playfulness and Daisy Age (an acronym purported to stand for “da inner sound y’all”) aesthetics stood in stark contrast to the prevailing modes of hip-hop. The album’s blend of quirky skits and poetic interludes and its masterful use of obscure samples opened new realms for hip-hop to explore and thrive in.

The cover of 3 Feet High and Rising, created by Toby Mott in collaboration with the Grey Organisation, immediately captures the eye. Cutouts of black-and-white portraits of De La Soul’s members—Posdnuos, Trugoy the Dove, and Pasemaster Mase—converge to create a triangle against a bright yellow backdrop. Their portraits are juxtaposed with a kaleidoscopic array of 2D flowers, peace signs, and playful text, signaling the album’s intent to chart a new course. The cover became a visual manifesto for De La’s unconventional approach to hip-hop, adding to the complexity and depth of the genre. MoMA acquired the cover design for the exhibition Making Music Modern: Design for Ear and Eye; it remains the sole hip-hop album artwork in the Museum’s collection.

The Grey Organisation, an artist collective that existed from 1983 to 1991, was notorious for a series of provocative actions—its members smuggled a painting into an art fair and vandalized galleries—that eventually got them banned from central London. Having relocated to New York, they produced a series of album covers and music videos for various artists. In honor of hip-hop’s 50th anniversary, I sat down with Toby Mott, the Grey Organisation’s founder, about his collaboration with De La Soul more than 30 years ago.
—DaeQuan Alexander Collier, Content Producer, Creative Team

What led you to begin designing album covers, and hip-hop album covers specifically? How did the genre align with the Grey Organisation’s mission to challenge the status quo?

Prior to social media and cell phones, there was the idea of place. In London, there were certain pubs in SoHo where creative people and outsiders would gravitate. And in New York, there was the East Village. Even having a telephone was a rarity and an expense that a lot of people didn’t have. You just needed to know where to go. You went there to meet other people like yourself. Social media is great because you can be in a basement in Tennessee and connect with some guy in Japan. But back then, you’d have to leave Tennessee and come live in New York (which now is a big deal because it's unaffordable). These cities were magnets for creative kids.

We were in New York at the right time. New York was the center of hip-hop then, with all these labels: Tommy Boy, Sleeping Bag, Def Jam, Priority, loads of them. I met Monica Lynch at Tommy Boy and made a video. It all leads from my background being punk, which was obviously tilting against the status quo of that period, the late ’70s. And then coming to New York, we found that energy in hip-hop. And then, luckily, we were embraced in the hip-hop community. I worked with A Tribe Called Quest. I worked with Public Enemy. Of course, at the time, it was just something to do. I wasn’t going, “This is monumental.” But I knew working with Public Enemy was a big deal. It had the same energy of punk—kicking against the machine.

Do you think the album’s design changed what hip-hop could look like? Could you feel in the music that De La was working against the raw and the hyper-violent, hypermasculine type of depictions?

There was a moment in the late ’80s and ’90s with the Native Tongues and other acts, like the Fugees. It was another kind of hip-hop, and De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest really voiced that. That energy is still there, but it was certainly new and radically different when it happened.

We used to listen religiously to Red Alert on Kiss FM, on Friday and Saturday nights, and he embraced it and also had the whole reggae thing. In the UK reggae is massive and always was, even during punk. Obviously hip-hop’s roots are from reggae—DJ Kool Herc is Jamaican—and I recognized that in the music. I liked bands like EPMD and Run-DMC, but obviously, I was aware that these acts, which also included Monie Love from the UK and Stetsasonic, were different. This was a new, fresh voice.