De La Soul & I are about to let you in on a life lesson that really hits when you’re a Black kid in America who doesn’t fit in:
Someone will always hate you for being yourself. Do it anyway.
That’s it. That’s the message.
Legendary producer Prince Paul interrupts De La Soul’s opening skit to briefly preface that message, imitating The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling: “If you take three glasses of water and put food coloring in them, you have many different colors, but it’s still the same old water. Make the connection?”
You probably won’t, but once the group heads to their dreaded “How to Be A Mainstream Rapper” class, where they’re repeatedly scolded & ridiculed for the way they stand out, things start to clear up. Throughout the video, a few rappers you know make real cameos (A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip and Ali), a few others are spoofed (Eric B & Rakim, Run-D.M.C., Doug E. Fresh), and eventually our heroes’ opening plea to “Mirror, Mirror” is answered by none other than their own reflections.
Lyrically, “Me Myself and I” is fairly straightforward. De La Soul frontmen Pos and Dove (aka Plug One and Plug Two, in reference to their microphone plug order) each take turns lamenting the shade that gets thrown at them when they’re just tryna mind their business, while DJ Maseo (Plug Three) spins what might just be the most recognizable sound byte in hip-hop history.
And that’s where De La Soul’s message of daring to be different ACTUALLY paid off. When Tommy Boy Records asked the group to record something more radio-friendly, they sampled Funkadelic, Edwin Birdsong, and the Ohio Players to begrudgingly deliver “Me Myself and I.”
It became their ONLY song to reach #1 on the U.S. R&B/Hip-Hop charts, and transformed three weird Black kids from New York into a trio of the world’s greatest musical legends.