Questlove told De La Soul how they changed his life in Fallon

For years, a crucial component of hip-hop history has been missing from the streaming music landscape: de la soul. Finally, last month the trio’s music hit Spotify, Apple Music and the rest. Tragically, however, it all came together shortly after the death of member Trugoy The Dove. To celebrate their streaming debut, however, surviving members Posdnuos and Maseo attended The Tonight Show yesterday (March 16) to talk about it.

A few minutes into the conversation, Jimmy Fallon spoke about the trio’s debut album, 1989 3 feet tall and rising, changed the lives of so many music fans and asked Questlove to share how the album changed him. Quest explained, “For the first time we’ve seen ourselves. That’s how the group came together, Tariq [Black Thought] and me. We saw three friends just having fun together, pranks and all that stuff, and we hadn’t seen that in hip-hop before.”

Elsewhere during the conversation, Fallon began acknowledging Trugoy’s death and how difficult De La Soul’s current revival must be in light of it. Posdnuos noted that it was “bittersweet”.

Later in the episode, the pair teamed up with The Roots for a performance of “Stakes Is High.”

Watch the interview above and the performance below.