Well that’s one way to celebrate 25 years in the game. De La Soul are giving away their entire music collection for free. Which is nice, but they probably only did it because a) they have all the money they’re ever going to need and b) people just download it for free anyway.

De La SoulDe La Soul: just have it

Kelvin Mercer (Posdnuos), David Jude Jolicoeur (Trugoy the Dove) and Vincent Mason (DJ Maseo) have been at it for a quarter of a century, having released their first album - 3 Feet High and Rising - in March 1989. De La Soul have sold more than 25m of their own albums, not counting collaborations, like their work with Gorillaz.

Mercer tells Rolling Stone, "It's about allowing our fans who have been looking and trying to get a hold of our music to have access to it. It's been too long where our fans haven't had access to everything. This is our way of showing them how much we love them."

He adds, "It's been a trying journey. We've been blessed to be in the Library of Congress, but we can't even have our music on iTunes. We've been working very hard to get that solved."

Starting today at 11am EST – that’s 4pm in the U.K - and continuing for 25 hours, visitors to De La Soul’s official site will be able to legally download the group’s complete discography for 25 hours.

“We’re just getting in the mode of constantly giving people new music,” Posdnuos said, talking about You’re Welcome, their first LP in a decade, which is due out ‘before summer’. “We’re our own worst critics ... Certain groups have too many ‘yes men.’ In our group, we have too many ‘no men’.”