"La Di Da Di" is released

Why it matters

"La Di Da Di" came out in July 1985 as the B-side to Doug E. Fresh's "The Show." Doug E. Fresh handled the human-beatbox. The rapper on the song was a then-unknown nineteen-year-old British transplant named Ricky Walters who went by MC Ricky D, and would soon go by Slick Rick. What "La Di Da Di" introduced to commercial rap, in three minutes, is storytelling. Slick Rick narrates a day in his life: he wakes up, brushes with Crest, goes to the club, fights a girl's mother, hooks up with the girl. Specific. Sequential. Cinematic. Funny. Nobody had really written rap that way before. "La Di Da Di" is one of the most sampled rap songs ever recorded. Snoop interpolated it as "Lodi Dodi." Notorious B.I.G. lifts from it. Miley Cyrus lifts from it. WhoSampled lists it in their top fifty most-sampled rap songs of all time. If you wanted to know where rap-as-storytelling enters the bloodstream, the date is July 1985. The B-side.