“The Daisy Age” – well, that’s a new one to me. I thought by now I’d come across every music genre, sub genre, era and movement. Seems I’m wrong. You see “The Daisy Age” relates to a music movement straddling the late 80s/early 90s… and, we’re told, it was short but sweet. The phrase was coined by De La Soul and they said it stood for “da inner sound y’all”... so there you go! More specifically it related to a brand of hip-hop/R&B that embraced playfulness, optimism and quirky humour with tunes that more often than not used unusual and/or catchy samples as their main hooks.
If you want a more concise, sonic definition then go straight to a new 18 track collection from Ace Records – simply called ‘The Daisy Age’. The set kicks off with the aforementioned De La Soul with the wonderful cut and paste ‘A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays’ and finishes with the lesser well-known ‘You’re Not Coming Home’ from Groove Garden. In between those poles there’s a sprinkling of lesser luminaries (Chi Ali, Black Sheep and Justin Warfield amongst them) and plenty of genre big hitters like a Tribe Called Quest, Digital Underground, Monie Love, Queen Latifah, Brand Nubian and the Dream Warriors with their famous Quincy Jones sampled ‘My Definition of a Bombastic Jazz Style’.
Big name/small name…. what they all offer are tasty slabs of cleverly crafted musical optimism…indeed – music to trip through the daises with. And if you have any questions, extensive sleeve notes from Matt Hall offer all the answers.
