It’s become a risible cliche to state that a recently-passed artist “taught me that it’s OK to be weird.” But what if it’s still true, not just from the perspective of an individual’s experience, but in the context of an entire culture? The reconnections people have been making with De La Soul in the last month — spurred by the near-concurrent announcement of their catalogue’s escape from sample-rights purgatory onto streaming platforms and the death of their MC Dave “Trugoy The Dove” Jolicouer at age 54 — have been more than just nostalgia trips for oldheads. They’ve actually given some perspective to where De La really stood on the precipice of hip-hop’s revered late ’80s-early ’90s Golden Era: as the geeky weirdo class clowns who skeptics struggled to take seriously until the sheer force of their creativity became impossible to deny.