Early last month, Aaron Williams over at Uproxx reminded us that De La Soul’s debut album, 3 Feet High and Rising, came out 30 years ago. Oh, man. This was one of the classic albums from my high school years. Even though it was released just three months shy of graduation, it made a seismic impression on both me and my fellow seniors. It seemed like we all had a copy, and it got played at every party we went to until the end of the school year. It was the ubiquitous, smart, feelgood party record from the spring of 1989.

How good is this album? About a month after I first bought it, a friend borrowed it for a party she was going to, then had to sheepishly tell me the next day that someone had swiped it while she wasn’t looking.

That’s how good 3 Feet High and Rising is: it’s good enough to steal. I can’t say that about any other album from my high school years.

But, of course, there’s much more to this record than just that.

For my buddy, Derek, a fellow De La fan from way back, 3 Feet High and Rising appeared at an equally impressionable time – the back end of middle school in his native Baltimore – and made an immediate impact on him. The songs struck him as more intricate and melodic than other hip-hop from that era, built more along the melodies of the samples being used. Case in point: “Say No Go” and “Eye Know,” both of which introduced a new generation of music fans to Hall & Oates and Steely Dan, respectively.

Derek remembers when there used to be many different kinds of hip-hop personas on the scene – some defined by hard beats, flowing rhymes, and overt political themes – and De La Soul (along with their colleagues from the Native Tongues collective) pioneered a new one: it was nerdier, wittier, and funnier – and atypical of their contemporaries. The group summed themselves up perfectly on one of 3 Feet‘s signature tracks, “Buddy,” when they said, “De La Soul, from the soul / Black medallions, no gold.” Derek loved how they made easygoing Afrocentrism an acceptable hip-hop personality.

So did I. For me, 3 Feet remains fun and sunny, an album made in an emblematic emotional major key, and one that also features a more positive, humble, wide-ranging worldview than the prevailing hip-hop from that era. The record’s smooth beats and its sense of rhythm and syncopation are more akin to jazz, but its still just as funky and danceable as one expects hip-hop to be. (The Dean himself, Robert Christgau, said it best in his review of the album: “…they’re new wave to Public Enemy’s punk.”)

3 Feet High and Rising‘s effect on hip-hop was significant and immediate: The Village Voice‘s annual Pazz & Jop Critics Poll crowned it the best album of 1989. By the mid-1990s, De La Soul’s influence could be heard in the music of Arrested Development, Digable Planets, Us3, Jurassic 5, The Pharcyde, and about five million other hip-hop groups. (For a more in-depth and objective take, check out Jeff Chang’s appraisal at Pitchfork.) And, in 2010, the Library of Congress added 3 Feet to their National Recording Registry of recordings deemed socially, culturally, or artistically important.

For me and Derek, it’s easily one of the top 10 greatest hip-hop albums of all-time. Hands down, no question.

I would almost say that it’s still worth stealing, but the stone cold truth is that 3 Feet High and Rising is even better than that: it’s worth shelling out your hard-earned ducats to pay full list price for. I can’t say that about most other albums from my high school years.