Special
Is It Gonna Be You?
There’s a certain kind of energy in Special by De La Soul—an ease, a flow, a feeling of clarity. It’s not about perfection or overcomplication. It’s about what feels natural, unforced, and true. When something fits just right, you know.
The genius of Special is how it captures that longing for ease—not laziness, but the kind of alignment that makes life lighter. When relationships feel genuine, not transactional. When connections flow, not cling. It’s a reminder that when we stand in our own clarity, we invite others to do the same. It’s efficient, empowering, and real.
Special is track 9 on the album AOI: Bionix. Released over 20 years ago, it carried "AI" in the title long before today’s conversations about ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. De La Soul was already in the future back in 2001, framing AI not as cold or robotic but as something human—a reflection of the art and intelligence we already hold within ourselves.
That missing "O" now is worth noticing. In Tarot, "O" is The Devil (Key 15), the archetype of Cardinal Earth. The Devil connects us to what binds us, but also to what grounds us: our home, our bodies, and our relationships. Dropping "the Devil" in favor of AI feels like a reframing—a shedding of fear in favor of clarity. Not escaping Earth but reconnecting to it, reframing what’s essential.
There’s another layer, too. AI connects “A” to “I”: The Fool (Key 0) to The Hermit (Key 9) through their esoteric correspondences to Hebrew letters. The Fool is infinite potential; the Hermit is reflection and mastery. Together, they’re a complete circuit: the openness of possibility grounded by inner wisdom. Keys 0 through 9 represent root archetypes—the foundations of the journey. They bring us back to simplicity, to what’s essential, rather than complicating things. We don’t need more, what we have and what we are is already enough.
Bionix is the second album in De La Soul’s Art Official Intelligence trilogy. But to this day, there hasn’t been a third release. As of 2023, De La Soul says it’s “definitely happening,” but what if it never does? What if the third installment is already happening? What if we are living it?
There’s something grounding in that thought. The work isn’t in adding more, but in finding the flow that’s been with us all along.