02.07.2025 at Parco della Musica, Segrate (Mi)

De La Soul at Parco della Musica, or: How I Almost Became a Hip-Hop fan for one night

Let me start with a confession: I’m not a rap person. My playlists are more likely to include The Beatles or Radiohead or Talking Heads or Cole Porter than anything remotely hip-hop. And before few months ago, I would have struggled to name a single De La Soul song even though I knew, vaguely, that they were important. That’s about the extent of my cultural knowledge: “De La Soul = iconic,” period. So if you’re here looking for a detailed critique of their lyrical evolution or a nostalgic breakdown of “3 Feet High and Rising”, I’m afraid I’ll disappoint. But if you want to know what it was like to attend a De La Soul concert in the outskirts of Milan, with 300 people and one last metro to catch, well, keep reading.

The venue: Parco della Musica in Segrate, a name that sounds vaguely majestic. It’s a new venue, and this was my first time there. It sits near Linate airport, in the middle of what looks like a slightly surreal concert island with all the airplanes taking off. Spacious, although a bit anonymous, plus it’s not far from home (win-win). There are food trucks, security guards and on that particular evening… not a whole lot of people.

“How many are we” F asked the guy checking tickets. “Like… 300, more or less?” he replied.
That wasn’t exactly a packed crowd. Which, if you ask me, was perfect. No elbowing your way to the front, no losing F anywhere: it almost felt more like a community gathering than a gig.

The concert started a little bit earlier than expected—a rare twist in the plot of Italian event planning. I’m used to the sacred ritual of standing around for at least 45 minutes after the “official” start time, wondering if the artists got lost somewhere. But no: De La Soul were there, they were on stage and they were into it.

And that, I think, was the magic of the evening. You didn’t need to know all the songs (I certainly didn’t), or to have lived through the golden age of hip-hop, to get swept up in it. They performed joy, one track rolling into the next with barely a pause. They smiled, they danced, they joked with the crowd, they kept on shouting “Party People!” like it was Madison Square Garden. It didn’t matter that we were just a couple hundred strangers gathered under a suburban sky. For that hour and a half – maybe longer, we didn’t stay ‘til the end – they gave it everything.

Yes, we had to leave early, the last metro from Segrate back home doesn’t wait for any encore. As the show went on, we kept checking the time, doing mental calculations, weighing the beauty of live music against the bleak prospect of a very expensive taxi ride. At some point we surrendered to logic, turned our backs on the crowd and made our way to the station with a faint sense of betrayal (NEVER in my entire life I left a concert earlier), while the music was still pulsing behind us as we walked away.

I kept thinking about that. About how rare it is to see performers so obviously happy to be there, even in front of a small crowd in a brand-new venue. They could’ve cancelled it but didn’t: they brought the party, even if the party was on a casual night in front of 300 semi-hipsters and one food truck.

I’m still not a rap person. But for those ninety minutes I sort of wished I were. I wished I had the references, the background, the lived-in knowledge of what it means to hear De La Soul live, now, in 2025. Because even from the edges of that world, even without the full picture, it felt like something meaningful. Like I’d stumbled into a cultural moment just slightly outside my own personal soundtrack—but worth remembering nonetheless.

And hey, there’s always time to catch up. Maybe I’ll start with The Magic Number and see where it takes me.

(Couldn’t find any setlist, unfortunately)