De La Soul's Posdnuos and Maseo to honor Trugoy at NYC show

Hip-hop icons Posdnuos and Maseo, of the Amityville trio De La Soul, will hold a live tribute to their late bandmate Trugoy the Dove at Manhattan’s Webster Hall Thursday evening. Trugoy, born David Jolicoeur, died last month at the age of 54. The rapper had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure but the cause of his death has not been made known publicly.

The tribute is also timed to the streaming debut of De La Soul's classic back catalog — previously unavailable due to legal issues surrounding their copious use of music samples — which is set for March 3.

Titled “The D.A.I.S.Y. Experience,” the live event takes its name from “D.A.I.S.Y. Age,” a track on the band’s 1989 debut, “3 Feet High and Rising." That landmark album established De La Soul as a peace-and-love alternative to the mostly hard-edge rappers of the era. (The acronym stands for Da Inner Sound, Y’all.) The show will include a DJ set by The Originals, featuring Stretch Armstrong, Clark Kent, Rich Medina and Tony Touch. The two surviving members of De La Soul have not confirmed a live musical performance but will appear in person to celebrate the life of Trugoy, an amiable rap presence whose whimsical stage name was a backward spelling of his favorite food, yogurt. Other guests have yet to be announced.

The 8 p.m. show will be followed by livestreamed interviews with friends of De La Soul on the Amazon Music Channel through Twitch beginning at 10:30 p.m.

Trugoy likely would have relished a chance to perform at Webster Hall. In an intro to a music video for the 2016 song “Royalty Capes,” Jolicoeur revealed that he was wearing a defibrillator unit called a LifeVest but yearned to play live again. “I'm ready just to get back to the stage,” he told viewers. “I miss it. I love traveling, I love being around my guys. And I want that back.”

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com