by DAN RYS AUG 4TH, '14 | XXL

Earlier this year, both De La Soul and Pete Rock confirmed that a new project, set to be called Premiem Soul On The Rocks, was in the works which would be entirely produced by both Rock and DJ Premier. Originally scheduled to be an EP, the collection will now take the form of a mixtape, which the famed Long Island trio consisting of Posdnous, Dave and Maseo will begin working on this September.

“Right now we’re just accumulating beats,” Dave told XXL in a phone interview earlier today (Aug. 4). ”The guys have been sending us beats. No real idea of what the theme is gonna be, the theme behind the title, what that’s gonna be, if it’s gonna be skits, if it’s gonna be songs, remakes, whatever it is. Right now we’ve just been accumulating beats and waiting for Premier to handle some stuff as well. So it’s still in its early stages, but we actually plan on recording through the month of September for it, so we’re getting on it.”

De La Soul has been keeping busy throughout 2014, which also marks the 25th anniversary of the group’s debut album, 3 Feet High And Rising, a milestone that came in March. The month prior, on Valentine’s Day, De La released their entire back catalog for free via Dropbox. The promotion proved so wildly popular that Dropbox actually crashed twice, causing the group to apologize to fans. A second project, Smell The D.A.I.S.Y., followed a month later via BitTorrent, and was composed of a mixtape using all J Dilla beats, an audio letter from the trio and a documentary film titled Dilla Still Shining, all in one bundle. They followed that by releasing 100 limited-edition vinyl instrumental copies of the Dilla tape to record stores around the country on Easter, positing the move as an Easter Egg hunt for fans.

The success of the BitTorrent package is likely to mean De La will be using the service to deliver another project that they also have in the works, a De La Soul album featuring live original instrumentation.

“We’ve got musicians coming together and working on some music, actually just playing music for hours, and we’re sampling off what the musicians are playing,” Dave explained. “They’re just like endlessly playing for hours upon hours, and we’re just sampling from it. So it’s kinda cool.”

As for when another project might be coming, Dave hinted that the group has been consciously following the holiday schedule with their releases this year. “We’ve been talking about some ideas because the next holiday is coming up, [laughs] so look out for something cool, hopefully coming up Labor Day or Thanksgiving, one of the two,” Dave said. “Or maybe even before that, with Halloween, maybe Halloween. We got a couple coming up.”

Check out the group’s last project, Smell The D.A.I.S.Y., right here. —Dan Rys