Plug 1 & Plug 2: First Serve

Longtime fans of De La Soul will experience a distinct feeling of déjà vu listening to First Serve, a concept album from the venerable hip-hop outfit’s Posdonus and Dave that finds the veteran MCs slipping inside the skin of hungry young rappers Jacob “Pop Life” Barrow and Deen Whitter respectively. Conceptually, structurally, and thematically, the album bears an unmistakable resemblance to A Prince Among Thieves, the 1999 concept album from the duo’s former producer and mentor Prince Paul. But where Prince Among Thieves was a classic showbiz-vs.-crime sonic melodrama with an overflowing cast of guest stars, First Serve is a more small-scale, self-contained opus (with production from French duo Chokolate and Khalid and guests only in the album’s handful of skits) about a pair of middle-class college graduates whose friendship and partnership are tested not by the temptations of the underworld, but rather by the pressures of a merciless music industry.