De La Soul - Art Official Intelligence: Bionix

The second half of an ambitious creative diptych, and a fittingly generous closing chapter of De La Soul's remarkable run on Tommy Boy Records. Released on December 4, 2001, exactly eleven years to the day after their landmark debut One For All, AOI: Bionix is the sixth studio album from Posdnuos, Trugoy the Dove, and Maseo, and the companion piece to Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump, completing the AOI project they had conceived as a two-part statement about hip-hop's relationship with technology, commerce, and identity.

The album finds the trio in an expansive mood, moving through an impressive range of emotional and thematic territory with the ease of a group that has never once stopped growing. "Baby Phat" featuring Yummy Bingham and Devin the Dude is a warmly affectionate ode to larger-sized women delivered with characteristic De La Soul wit and charm, becoming one of the album's most beloved and enduring tracks. "Held Down" featuring Cee-Lo finds Posdnuos in a rare moment of sustained introspection, meditating on fatherhood, religion, and the complicated realities of fame with a candour and emotional intelligence that cuts right through. Slick Rick makes a memorable appearance on "What We Do (For Love)," turning in one of the funniest and most affectionately observed treatments of puberty and sexual awakening in hip-hop's catalog.

Threading through the whole album is the Reverend Do Good, a recurring skit character who functions as social commentary and structural connective tissue simultaneously, his observations serving as intros and outros to the songs and culminating in one final advertisement for Ghost Weed, a running gag carried over from Mosaic Thump that closes the book on an era with typical De La Soul humor and affection.

One of the most criminally underappreciated albums in a catalog full of them, AOI: Bionix rewards the patient listener with exactly the depth and craft that has always made De La Soul essential.