At the Grammy Awards last month, the rap trio De La Soul was booked for the show’s 50th anniversary tribute to hip-hop, alongside more than two dozen performers. The timing was perfect, coming just a few weeks ahead of the long-delayed digital release of the group’s storied catalog.

But the day before the ceremony, David Jolicoeur, who was known as Trugoy the Dove — and had long been public about having congestive heart failure — told his bandmates he was too ill to make it; Vincent Mason, a.k.a. Maseo, the group’s D.J., also had health problems. Kelvin Mercer, known as Posdnuos, represented the trio alone, rapping part of “Buddy” from its classic 1989 debut, “3 Feet High and Rising.”

“It was a bittersweet performance for me,” Mercer said last week, “because I was looking so forward to having my brothers there for this amazing moment.” A week after the Grammys, Jolicoeur died at age 54.

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