Veteran rap trio De La Soul will embark next month on a speaking and performance tour of U.S. colleges. Dubbed the Past, the Present, the Future trek, it will begin March 2 at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and run through March 30 at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. The outing will be sponsored by Toyota.

"We've wanted to do something like this for awhile," group member Pos says. "We're fans of hip-hop and to have the opportunity to talk to young people about what's so powerful in hip-hop -- its history and what's going on right now -- is the coolest thing we could be doing."
Tickets to the shows will be available for just $1.20, while the symposiums are free of charge. At each stop and on Spitkicker.com, attendees can enter to win four scholarships underwritten by proceeds from the tour.

De La Soul has also lined up several special guests for the shows, including A Tribe Called Quest's Phife Dawg, Scarface, Raphael Saadiq and Dwele, and promises additional surprises.

The group is out in support of its fall 2004 debut for Sanctuary, The Grind Date,which peaked at No. 10 on Billboard's Top Rap Albums chart.

Here are De La Soul's tour dates:

March 2: Washington, D.C. (Blackburn Center, symposium)
March 2: Washington, D. C. (Lincoln Theatre, performance)
March 3: Baltimore (Morgan St. University, symposium)
March 4: Philadelphia (Lincoln University, symposium)
March 4: Philadelphia (Kimmel Center, performance)
March 6: New York (Spirit, performance)
March 7: Newark, N.J. (Rutgers University, symposium)
March 8: St. Louis (Washington University, symposium)
March 8: St. Louis (Fox Theatre, performance)
March 9: Detroit (African-American Museum of History, performance)
March 10: Detroit (Wayne St. University, symposium)
March 11: Houston (Texas Southern University, symposium)
March 11: Houston (Jones Hall, performance)
March 20: Chicago (Museum of Contemporary Arts, performance)
March 21: Chicago (Columbia College, symposium)
March 23: Atlanta (Clark University, symposium)
March 23: Atlanta (Woodruff Arts Center, performance)
March 28: Las Vegas (UNLV, symposium)
March 28: Las Vegas (Ra, performance)
March 30: Los Angeles (USC, symposium)
March 30: Los Angeles (Director's Guild of America, performance)

Credits: Billboard/ Jonathan Cohen