3 Feet High and Rising is the debut studio album by the American hip hop group De La Soul, released on February 6, 1989, by Tommy Boy Records. It is the first of three collaborations with the producer Prince Paul, and was the critical and commercial peak of both parties. The album title comes from the Johnny Cash song "Five Feet High and Rising". The album contains the singles "Me Myself and I", "The Magic Number", "Buddy", and "Eye Know".
The album was a critical and commercial success. It is consistently placed on lists of the greatest albums of all time by noted critics and publications, with Robert Christgau calling it "unlike any rap album you or anybody else has ever heard". In 1998, it was selected as one of The Sources "100 Best Rap Albums" and in 2020 was ranked 103 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. It was selected by the Library of Congress as a 2010 addition to the National Recording Registry, which selects recordings annually that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". As of 2025, it is the only De La Soul album to be certified platinum by the RIAA.
Along with the rest of De La Soul's back catalog, 3 Feet High and Rising was not made available for digital purchase or streaming until 2023, due to concerns about the legality of the samples for digital releases.
Musical style
Released amid the late-1980s boom in gangsta rap, which gravitated towards hardcore, confrontational, violent lyrics, 3 Feet High and Rising stood out from this trend by showcasing De La Soul's more positive style. The mirth and intelligence of De La Soul's self-presentation led many observers to label them a "hippie" group, a characterization that De La Soul's members have consistently disputed. On the album, De La Soul sought to explicitly distance themselves from gangsta rap by "lampoon[ing] emerging tropes" such as the growing materialism within the genre.
The album features a recurring lyrical motif of the "D.A.I.S.Y. Age", an acronym that stands for "Da Inner Sound, Y'all".
The album is also known for its quiz show-themed series of skits, leading it to be frequently credited with inventing or popularizing the hip-hop skit.
Artwork
The album's artwork was designed by Toby Mott of the British art collective the Grey Organisation (GO), who had relocated to New York City after their attack on Cork Street's art galleries and subsequent prosecution.
De La Soul's "D.A.I.S.Y. Age" concept inspired the design of the album cover, as Mott describes in his essay "Hip Hop in The Daisy Age":
Group member Trugoy has stated that De La Soul was not originally interested in the flower-adorned cover that the album ultimately featured; instead, he said the group had wanted an album cover that featured "an elevator halfway up with just our faces".
Reception and influence
3 Feet High and Rising received widespread critical acclaim upon its release. "An inevitable development in the class history of rap, [De La Soul is] new wave to Public Enemy's punk", wrote Robert Christgau of the album in his 1989 "Consumer Guide" column for The Village Voice. "Their music is maddeningly disjunct, and a few of the 24-cuts-in-67-minutes (too long for vinyl) are self-indulgent, arch. But their music is also radically unlike any rap you or anybody else has ever heard — inspirations include the Jarmels and a learn-it-yourself French record. And for all their kiddie consciousness, junk-culture arcana, and suburban in-jokes, they're in the new tradition – you can dance to them, which counts for plenty when disjunction is your problem."
Sampling artists as diverse as Johnny Cash, Hall & Oates, Steely Dan and the Turtles, 3 Feet High and Rising is often viewed as the stylistic beginning of 1990s alternative hip hop (and especially jazz rap). Writing in retrospect for The A.V. Club, Nathan Rabin credits Prince Paul for helping "create progressive hip hop" with his production on 3 Feet High and Rising, while author John Riordan says "its comedy skits and positive lyrics established the group as a progressive hip-hop act at odds with the increasingly violent image of mainstream rap." Phil Witmer of Noisey cites De La Soul's "sampledelia" on the album as an "old-school" example of sampling being applied to "jarring, collage-like effect". 3 Feet High and Rising is also credited with introducing the hip hop skit, a style of comedic sketch used both to introduce rap albums and as interludes between songs.
On the Billboard charts, 3 Feet High and Rising peaked at No. 1 on the R&B/Hip Hop charts and No. 24 in the Top 200.
Retrospective opinion
3 Feet High and Rising has been included on numerous "best-of" lists. In 1998, the album was included in The Sources "100 Best Albums" list. It was ranked number 346 on Rolling Stones 2003 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time", maintaining the ranking in a 2012 revision of the list, then rising to number 103 in a 2020 revision. 3 Feet High and Rising was voted number 138 in the 2000 edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums, while in 2005, it ranked 88th in a survey held by British television's Channel 4 to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time. The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
In 2006, Q magazine placed the album at No. 20 in its list of "40 Best Albums of the '80s". In 2012, Slant Magazine listed the album at No. 9 on its list of "Best Albums of the 1980s". Spex listed 3 Feet High and Rising at No. 5 on its list of the Top 100 Albums of the Century. The album has also been ranked as among the top albums of 1989 by publications including Rolling Stone, The Face, Record Mirror, Sounds, OOR, and Melody Maker.
An NPR retrospective, published in 2023, stated that 3 Feet High and Rising "reshaped the public imagination of what hip-hop could be", and that it "still sounds wondrous and weird" in the musical landscape of the 2020s.
Macy Gray felt it was "the best record of the past 15 years" in Q, describing De La Soul as "like the Beatles of hip hop". The Village Voice described 3 Feet High and Rising as "the Sgt. Pepper of hip hop".
In 2011, 3 Feet High and Rising was among 25 albums chosen as additions to the Library of Congress' 2010 National Recording Registry for being cultural and aesthetical and also for its historical impact.