Damon Albarn is mourning his friend by doing what he does best: making music. To honor De La Soul‘s Trugoy The Dove, who passed away this week, the Gorillaz musician shared a piano tribute on Instagram.
Posted Monday morning (Feb. 13) — one day after it was announced that Trugoy, born David Jude Jolicoeur, had died at age 54 — Albarn’s video was filmed from the inside of his acoustic piano. As the Blur frontman taps out a sweet instrumental melody, you can see the wooden hammers for each key striking the notes internally.
“A loop for Dave,” Albarn captioned the video. “I love you 🕊 ⚓️ ❤️”
Jolicoeur’s cause of death was not revealed when his reps confirmed his passing to All Hip Hop on Sunday, but he was known to have struggled with health issues related to congestive heart failure. He formed De La Soul in 1988 with Kelvin Mercer (Posdnuos) and Vincent Mason (Maseo), and the hip-hop trio released several albums together over the course of three decades together, the most recent of which was 2016’s And the Anonymous Nobody…
In 2005, the Gorillaz and De La Soul collaborated on “Feel Good Inc.,” which peaked at No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned best pop collaboration at the 2006 Grammys.
The sad news about Jolicoeur comes just a couple months after Albarn lost another one of his friends, The Specials frontman Terry Hall. He posted a video of him playing Hall’s “Friday Night, Saturday Morning” on Twitter at the time in honor of the legendary second wave ska singer, writing, “Terry, you meant the world to me. I love you.”
Watch Damon Albarn’s sweet tribute to De La Soul’s Trugoy The Dove below:
