Me Myself And I By De La Soul - Songfacts

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Me Myself And Iby De La Soul

Album: 3 Feet High and Rising (1989)Charted: 22 34 License This Song  lyricsartistfacts Play Video

Songfacts®:

"Me Myself and I" is one of De La Soul's most popular songs, but the group hates it. They made this very clear during performances when they would introduce it by saying, "Let's get this over with," then chant, "We hate this song!" in the chorus.In interviews, they explained that it was foisted on them by their record label, Tommy Boy, which insisted they come up with a familiar, poppy song that could be released as a single and get them a hit. The song was both a blessing and a curse: it got them on the radio and earned them a bigger fanbase, but it sucked the oxygen out of other songs from their catalog they liked a lot better.
This was the big hit from De La Soul's debut album, 3 Feet High and Rising. One of the most innovative albums of the late 1980s, it merged traditional hip-hop with humorous lyrics, abundant samples and jazz elements. It was helmed by hip-hop producer and DJ Prince Paul, who at the time was the keyboard player with Stetsasonic.Pasemaster Mase of De La Soul recalled to Rolling Stone: "When I met Paul, he was trying to express a lot of different ideas with Stetsasonic and it wasn't working out too well. We were looking to be professionals at making records and he was a professional. It just really sparked."
Typical of De La Soul, there are a soup of samples on this track, but the main groove comes from Funkadelic's "(Not Just) Knee Deep." That song's writers, George Clinton and Philippe Wynne, are credited on "Me Myself and I" along with De La Soul.
The vocal melody is cribbed from the 1988 Jungle Brothers song "Black Is Black," which features the rapper Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest. De La Soul give him a shout in the lines:I know this so I point at Q-Tip And he states, Black is Black
The song is about being yourself and wearing your individual style with pride, so it's surprising how the group would disparage it in concert. De La Soul rapper Trugoy The Dove explained to Rolling Stone: "Originally, it was us trying to make sure we're saying we're not hippies. We were just being ourselves. People are now taking the song to be, 'OK, it's cool to be me and I don't have to be hard' - it wasn't really about saying that, even though the video came off like that."
"Me Myself and I" was the first rap song to top the R&B chart since "I Need Love" by LL Cool J two years earlier. This was a pretty big deal because rap was still on the fringes and the R&B chart was dominated by acts like Anita Baker and Luther Vandross. A few years later, acts like Naughty By Nature and Dr. Dre started showing up at the top of the chart.
In the video, the group play high school students who are pushed to conform to traditional hip-hop norms. Q-Tip and Ali from A Tribe Called Quest make guest appearances, and their producer, Prince Paul, appears in the dialogue portion at the beginning, dropping this knowledge: "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?"
Spurred by a documentary about De La Soul broadcast on the VPRO television station, "Me Myself and I" topped the singles chart in The Netherlands.

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Lyrics to Me Myself And I
De La Soul Artistfacts

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Comments: 2

Kellen Hanson from Pittsburgh@Jason Mirror mirror on the wall,Shovel chestnuts in my pathPlease keep on up with the nutsSo I don't get in after math (Detention after math class?)But if I do I'll calmly punch themIn the fourth day of July (A holiday, no school no detention if he punches someone?)'Cause they tried to mess withThird degree, that's me myself and I
Jason from Tampa, FlWhat does the part at the end about chestnuts, walnuts, aftermaths and the 4th of July mean?

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