After recently scoring the No.1 spot on Billboard's rap charts for their ninth studio album and the Anonymous Nobody, the folks at Mass Appeal released a 30-minute video about De La Soul titled De La Soul Is Not Dead: The Documentary.

The newly released clip details the Long Island trio’s early beginnings, when they hung out in high school during the 1980s. During that time they also connected with producer and former Stetsasonic member Prince Paul, and together they created the debut album 3 Feet High and Rising, which is easily considered a classic.

In one part of the documentary, Paul talks about first meeting De La and explaining what he could do musically for them.

“I’m a nerd. I get that, and I accept that, but these guys are really nerdy,” said the legendary producer about first seeing the group. “They’re ultra nerdy like me and you rhyme? I told them what I could do and what I thought of them and how we could work together. It was perfect.”

As some may know, De La left their longtime label Tommy Boy Records after the release of their 2001 album AOI: Bionix and created a Kickstarter campaign to fund the Anonymous Nobody album. Perhaps surprisingly, the group reached $600,000 in a matter of hours when they only asked for $110,000 initially.

According to Pos, the trio decided to have fans fund the new album, because they didn’t want a record label changing what they already created. De La also talked to other artists who used crowdfunding campaigns, just so they wouldn’t make any mistakes.

“We started looking into it and asking around,” said Plug One to Complex.  “A few of the musicians who worked on the album, they had friends who had successful Kickstarter campaigns. [We] bounced off ideas, listened to what they had to say. In our investigation, we realized that even there were fans of ours that were familiar with the platform, so it helped us to feel like ‘Well, this is the right thing to do.’”

and the Anonymous Nobody album can be purchased on iTunes, and you can also watch De La Soul is Not Dead: The Documentary above.

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