Last year, alt-rap pioneers De La Soul made their animated debut on Cartoon Network’s Teen Titans Go!, appearing as themselves to help the titular superhero team defeat a giant octopus monster. Over the course of the episode, it’s revealed that the Titans were actually huge fans of the group, so Beast Boy, Cyborg, Raven, Robin, and Starfire would be excited to learn that their rhyme heroes are set to make their return to the show in its upcoming eighth season, according to Cartoon Network’s Winner Take All panel at San Diego Comic-Con this past week.
In the previous De La Soul guest episode, Robin gave his fellow Titans — dressed as old-school rap figures, naturally — a lesson in music royalties, a moment that held special meaning for the guest stars, who had been fighting to disentangle themselves from their original 1989 recording contracts over the past few years. Ironically, superhero fans encountered the fallout of that struggle in late 2021, after falling in love with De La’s musical stylings in the credits sequence of Spider-Man: No Way Home only to discover that the song is unavailable on DSPs, along with the bulk of the trio’s catalog.
And while De La has finally gained control of their masters as of August 2021, they’ve still got to unravel a labyrinth of sample clearances to avoid any legal issues in bringing those albums to streaming. Until then, they’ll keep fighting the forces of evil, and perhaps even offer some new musical renditions alongside the Teen Titans when the episode airs during season eight, whose start date has yet to be announced.