Anna Minard, our city hall reporter, claims to "know nothing about music." For this column, we're forcing her to listen to all the records that music nerds consider important.

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We start on an old-timey game show. Are you ready? "How many fibers are intertwined in a Shredded Wheat biscuit?" The purpose of the game, other than answering questions, winning, and getting money, are left unclear. We enter the world of this album through a skit, and leave it through a skit, but the theme doesn't swim throughout every song, it doesn't feel like a concept album. We've just turned on some old TV in a room somewhere, and the channel changes itself.

De La Soul play a game very well: The rhymes and beats sound smooth and rich yet easy and casual, like everything's rolling off the tongue. Like this is how they spit grocery lists, what their voice-mail message sounds like, what happens when you get a fake hairbrush microphone near their faces at a party. But the words roll so fast! Faster than they seem—if you are a rap-along-in-your-car kind of person, you are totally screwed a lot of the time, though you may not realize it at first. Save it for the professionals here and just enjoy.

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