''The Grind Date'' is the seventh studio album by American hip hop group De La Soul, released on October 5, 2004. The album was originally intended to be the final album of the ''Art Official Intelligence'' (''AOI'') trilogy, but as the album quickly changed focus, the group decided to put ''AOI III'' on hold and finish ''The Grind Date'' as a stand-alone work.
Music
''The Grind Date'' is a notably brisker, and leaner work than the group's previous albums, and features a top-of-the-line array of production talents including the late J Dilla (who was part of A Tribe Called Quest's production unit, The Ummah),
Madlib
Otis Jackson Jr. (born October 24, 1973), known professionally as Madlib, is an American DJ, music producer, multi-instrumentalist, and rapper. He is widely known for his collaborations with MF DOOM (as Madvillain), J Dilla (as Jaylib), and ...
9th Wonder
Patrick Denard Douthit (born January 15, 1975), better known as 9th Wonder, is a MF DOOM, was produced by
Jake One
Jacob Brian Dutton (born May 11, 1976), known professionally as Jake One, is an American record producer and songwriter.Palermo, Thomas (2008)Jake One Readies New Album, XLR8R, September 5, 2008Matos, Michaelangelo (2004)Rocketship Blowing Up, Se ...
, and sees Posdnuos addressing some recent trends in Hip hop with the line "Unlike them, we craft gems / so systematically inclined to pen lines / without sayin a producer's name, all over the track". The well received collaboration also brought attention to the then-unknown Jake One.
The album is light on guest appearances and features a total of four guest MCs, including Common. Unlike every De La Soul album before it, ''The Grind Date'' contains no skits at all, although a short musical prelude does precede the first song "The Future". The album's conceptual cover and sleeve booklet, based on a 2005 calendar, was designed by Morning Breath Inc.
In November 2014, ''The Grind Date'' was reissued by
BMG Rights Management
BMG Rights Management GmbH (also known simply as BMG) is an international music company based in Berlin, Germany. It combines the activities of a music publisher and a record label.
BMG was founded in October 2008 after Bertelsmann sold i ...
to commemorate the album's tenth anniversary.
Critical reception
The album met with a great deal of critical praise, as of February 25, 2008 according to
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
, the album has received an average critic score of 80%, based on 21 reviews, thus giving it the "generally favorable reviews" tag.
''
Pitchfork
A pitchfork (also a hay fork) is an agricultural tool with a long handle and two to five tines used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves.
The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to t ...
'' writer
Jamin Warren
Jamin Warren (born 1983) is co-founder and chief executive of Kill Screen, a video game arts and culture company that '' The New Yorker'' called "the McSweeney's of interactive media". He was formerly the host of the PBS webseries Game/Show. War ...
praises the album writing, "''The Grind Date'' brings together an unimaginable team of the underground's hottest producers and meshes their idiosyncrasies without dissidence." Steve Juon of RapReviews.com who rewarded the album with a perfect score wrote, "They were just waiting for the right time to kick precisely the right rhyme, so that "The Grind Date" would go down not just as an important date in rap history but in the pantheon of all musical endeavours since the dawn of mankind. It's that damn good."
De La Soul, previously known for their
skits
Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. The form developed and became popular in vaudeville, and i ...
, gained a lot of support from ''
Stylus Magazine
''Stylus Magazine'' was an American online music and film magazine, launched in 2002 and co-founded by Todd L. Burns. It featured long-form music journalism, four daily music reviews, movie reviews, podcasts, an MP3 blog, and a text blog.
Addi ...
'' writer Josh Drimmer who wrote, "''The Grind Date'' is as notable for what it lacks—skits, filler, bullshit—than for what it has." Dan Filowitz of '' Lost At Sea'' also favored the no skits on ''The Grind Date'', "''The Grind Date'' is almost shockingly excellent. This is De La Soul at their most focused – no skits, no filler, no weird interludes." Fiore Raymond of '' Entertainment Weekly'' gave the album a B+ and called it "worth keeping", while Robert Christgau gave it a one-star honorable mention ().
Despite generally favorable reviews and positivity towards their new style, especially in production, there were those who didn't praise it. Peter Relic of '' Rolling Stone'' wrote, "There's little personality and no surprises here..." and regards to the production "...Flavor Flav's rote shucking on "Come On Down" to
Madlib
Otis Jackson Jr. (born October 24, 1973), known professionally as Madlib, is an American DJ, music producer, multi-instrumentalist, and rapper. He is widely known for his collaborations with MF DOOM (as Madvillain), J Dilla (as Jaylib), and ...
's
Chingy
Howard Earl Bailey Jr. (born March 9, 1980), known professionally as Chingy, is an American rapper. Chingy grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and began rapping in his late teens. He toured as an opening act with Nelly in the summer of 2002 and then ...
-type beat for "Shopping Bags.""
''Pitchfork'' placed the album at number 31 on the "Top 50 Albums of 2004" list.