a roller skating jam named saturdays

De La Soul’s second album opens by burying the first one — a broken pot of daisies on the sleeve, and a running skit in which a kid pulls the cassette out of the trash, has it taken off him by bullies, and then has to listen to them slag off every track on it. Somewhere in the middle of all that contempt sits four minutes of undefended sunshine. It starts with a station ID for WRMS, a radio station that does not exist, read by Russell Simmons in the flat patter of a man reading a station ID, and then he hands over to Q-Tip.

Prince Paul built the thing out of other people’s Saturdays. Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park” is in there, and so is “Grease” — which is why the writing credits on a De La Soul single run Mercer, Huston, Jolicoeur, Mason, Fareed, and then Robert Lamm and Barry Gibb. Music & Media singled out the Frankie Valli lift as the most prominent one on the record. Q-Tip takes the first verse, Pos and Dave take the rest, Vinia Mojica sings the hook; all of them Native Tongues, so the guest list is less a booking than a family photograph. The title comes from the roller-skating fad of the previous decade, which by 1991 was already old enough to be somebody’s childhood.

Melody Maker made it Single of the Week and got it exactly right — De La Soul returning to “their natural home, Cartoonland”, on what Sally Margaret Joy called an “homage to disco pubescence”, the sunniest thing on an album that had gone out of its way to be anything but. It reached number four in New Zealand, twenty-two in Britain, and six on the American dance club chart, which is the correct chart for a song about a rink. The twelve-inch came loaded: a skit called “Who’s Skatin’ Promo” with Big Daddy Kane and Dres, a Ladies Nite Decision, a Dave’s Home Mix, a 6:00 AM Mix — six versions of one afternoon, as though nobody involved could work out how to end it. Save it for Saturday. It has been sitting there all week.