Trugoy the Dove of De La Soul has died

thefader.com:

Trugoy the Dove, the rapper and producer born David Jude Jolicoeur who changed hip-hop as one-third of De La Soul, has died.

He was 54. A representative for Jolicoeur confirmed his passing to The FADER. A cause of death was not revealed; in 2017 Jolicoeur openly discussed the effects of congestive heart failure on his health.

Born in Brooklyn, Jolicoeur moved to East Massapequa and attended high school in Long Island. There, he met Vincent Mason and Kelvin Mercer, the two artists with whom he would form De La Soul. "We didn't dress like anyone else and we had our own language so nobody would know what we were talking about," Jolicoeur once said, "so it was natural that we'd do different things with our music too." Read Next: Grammys tap GloRilla, Missy Elliott, Lil Wayne for hip-hop 50th anniversary performance The three teenagers landed on their pseudonyms — Jolicoeur chose Trugoy, or "yogurt" spelled backward, and was also known as Plug 2 and Dave — and began on the path to the album that would change their lives and the hip-hop canon.

3 Feet High and Rising, released in 1989 on Tommy Boy, was a critical and commercial smash for its infectious oddball energy, dense lyricism, and unorthodox use of samples.