For a brief moment in the late 80s and early 90s the New York-based Native Tongues crew made braininess and political consciousness the coolest qualities in hip-hop culture—and then gangsta rap exploded and put an end to all that. There were a lot of great groups under the Native Tongues banner—A Tribe Called Quest, the Jungle Brothers, Black Sheep—but De La Soul were arguably the most fun. Though they addressed heavy social issues without hesitation (a Native Tongues trademark), the trio of Posdnuos, Maseo, and Trugoy did so with wry, self-deprecating humor and a laid-back vibe that almost made them sound like hippies. And the albums they recorded with producer Prince Paul (including their 1989 debut, 3 Feet High and Rising, and 1991’s landmark De La Soul Is Dead) are among the most sonically adventurous in pop history. Last month Posdnuos and Trugoy, sans Maseo, dropped an album called First Serve (Duckdown)—the closest thing to a full-length De La Soul release in eight years—and the group is working on an album called You’re Welcome. For this week’s Artist on Artist, Pos (aka Kelvin Mercer) is interviewed by Chicago MC and activist Rhymefest, aka Che Smith. Smith came up a generation after De La, and his aesthetic is more gritty and blue-collar than hippie-dippy psychedelic. But his work—both as a solo artist and as a lyricist for Kanye’s early releases—has helped make their kind of social consciousness cool again. Plus he puts his money where his mouth is, and last year he made a valiant but unsuccessful run for City Council. De La Soul performs Fri 5/25 at the Shrine to celebrate the venue’s third anniversary. —Miles Raymer

That’s how De La has always done things. We look at it as the artist or the feature is an instrument—it’s like, we don’t say, “Yo, we just wanna make a joint with Drake” because we wanna make a joint with Drake. It could be that the song itself spoke to us, like, Yo, we need to add some keys to that, yo, we need some scratches, yo, this song needs some Drake, or yo, this song needs Redman. You know, that’s how we usually handle it.

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So OK, one thing I did want to say, man—real dope lyrics. “I’m a microphone fiend / Addicted to the concept of rolling with a team.” That was on the song “Pushin’ Aside, Pushin’ Along,” which I thought, those were really, really dope lyrics. But I got some questions about some things other than music. I wanted to ask you—you all been in a gang like, man, I would say over three decades. How do you keep your soul inspired to keep material fresh? Like, sometimes, over 30 years, you just say, Man, I’m over music. How do you keep from saying that? Yo, man, I love—we love what we do. And one thing that I love about my group is that we’re always learning new stuff. And for what we do, it isn’t like we’re athletes where, you know what, you get to a certain age and, you know, you’re the amazing Michael Jordan, you’re in your late 30s and you can’t do what you need to do. Like, we’re authors—me, even you, all of us, we’re all authors. There’s a lot of authors who sell these books and they’re, like, late 60s. It’s their minds just constantly reaching out for new inspiration, new music, new parts of life, new parts of seeing things that then inspire them to write. So I mean, that never stops.

There’s several great groups that we all know where, in knowing them, you realize, like, Yo, this person was trying to be a solo artist, that person is trying to be a solo artist, but they came together to make it. And then when one of them made it or got successful, then maybe the rifts and all that started. We always look at each other like, Yo, we can’t do this without each other. And even though, yeah, people always be like, “Yo, Pos, you can do a solo album,” or people say that to Dave or whatever, still we appreciate and love each other. So even the little squabbles we have, at the end of the day, it’s like I’m truly having a squabble with my blood brother. I’m never gonna disown him, I’m never gonna leave him—we just gotta talk through it.

But there’s a big imbalance, there’s a level of people feeling like, OK, these artists haven’t been heard in a minute or haven’t been around in a minute, so these younger kids, this is what they want. No, these younger kids—this is only what you’re feeding them. And if that’s what you’re feeding them, a lot of times that’s all they gonna take. As opposed to if you asked them, they could tell you, “Nah, I know who this dude is, yeah, I know who that is, but I know him through my brother, but yeah, I know who they are.” There’s just a level of music that is being not represented or shown at all.

That’s true, but I think that to represent De La Soul as all happy would be a misnomer. When you look at songs—even if you go back to “Potholes in My Lawn,” there was always an element of conflict. I guess what I’m saying is, does personal happiness with no conflict—it seems as though some people would say, OK, when Mary J. Blige is in a relationship and she’s happy, her music is not as good. Do you think your personal happiness—and I guess I’m not talking about music, I’m talking about your personal happiness—throw your music down? For me, I honestly can’t say it does. Because for me, as a youth even into now, I always focused on trying my best to think of the newest thing to talk about, or the newest angle to approach a subject that’s been talked about already. That’s something that’s really been a part of me. But I definitely agree with what you’re saying. Sometimes when you wanna make sure your money’s right, when you wanna make sure you’re not in certain levels of ills, you turn around and focus so you can get out of them. But I mean, even when I spent a young part of my life in the Bronx growing up, I didn’t realize I had it bad because my parents gave me so much to see and to be a part of. And even by the time I moved to Long Island, once again, I was blessed to have so many amazing and great things around me. So I think that shaped the way I thought and how I could reach and try to imagine things.

They have to realize that we’re in this amazing age of technology where everything goes fast—we’re on the Internet now, where we can download Rhymefest songs real fast as opposed to walking out your house, getting on the bus, going to Uncle George to get it. I mean, no one does that no more. We think that everything in our lives has to be fast, and given to us fast, and I think he needs his next term to do what he needs to do.