Stakes Is High

Product Information

The album did provide a launching pad for future star rappers and actors Mos Def, who appeared on the track "Big Brother Beat" and Common who is featured on "The Bizness". The introduction track begins with various clips of interviews, the interviewees describing where they were when they first heard the influential rap album Criminal Minded. Great to see so many other reviewers echoing what I'm feeling about this record - its absolute quality! The music video for "Stakes Is High" has all three members of De La Soul on an episode of The Maury Povich Show (with Povich appearing as himself) about hip-hop culture in the 1990s and how much of an influence it is on the world, along with clips of each De La Soul member doing typical household chores (raking leaves, doing laundry, etc.

Da Inna Sound, Y'all) philosophy on their brilliant and weird debut, Three Feet High and Rising (making them the first—and probably only—hip-hop act to appropriate a Johnny Cash song for their album title). City-bred trio of Posdnuos (Pos), Dave and Maseo continued to impact Hip Hop culture with five more groundbreaking albums: "De La Soul Is Dead" ('91), "Buhloone Mindstate" ('93), "Stakes Is High" ('96), "Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump" ('00) and "AOI: Bionix" ('01). Dave's input was no less outspoken: "I'm sick of bitches shakin' asses / I'm sick of talkin' about blunts / Sick of Versace glasses / Sick of slang / Sick of half-ass awards shows / Sick of name brand clothes. Gangsta rapper 2Pac later retaliated on the song "Against All Odds" from his posthumous 1996 album The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory (as well as the unreleased song "Watch Ya Mouth" recorded during the same sessions). At the end of track 15, "Pony Ride"—an excerpt from the documentary Crumb, in which Maxon Crumb discusses his struggle living on the streets, describing his periods of optimism and depression.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

I’m not sure how the record itself sounds, but the cover looks amazing and it arrived protected and in perfect condition. The streaming version of the album divides "The Bizness" into two tracks, "The Bizness" and "Yunonstop". Stakes Is High was mainly produced by the group themselves, with additional tracks provided by Jay Dee, DJ Ogee, Spearhead X and Skeff Anslem. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. At the end of track 9, "Long Island Degrees", a "redneck" explains why he hates rap music ("There's no music in it.I’m a beginner at this vinyl thing when it comes to assessing records but this sounds really good to my ears. Like other De La Soul albums, Stakes Is High has a running theme, which in this case is the group's concern about the state of rap, as well as the state of hip hop culture and how it is regarded in general. I look back on people like that and think about how they had that moment of clarity, where they looked around them and at things decaying in their society–whether it’s music or life, that’s where “Stakes is High” was at. Tip is playing this new beat for Pos from Dilla and based on the history that those two have, anytime Pos gave a head nod to some shit, Q-Tip ended up keeping the beat and try to make something out of it, so he tried to use reverse psychology on this particular one.

Then they tried to kill the Daisy with their follow-up, De La Soul Is Dead and then tried to find their way through the aftermath of that unnecessary act on Buh-Loone Mind State. Feet High and Rising was De La Soul's first release and a very influential album, held in similarly high regard as Criminal Minded, which is discussed at the beginning of the album. Dilla was excited because here we are at this point in time where Dilla had already been seasoned in the game doing different things in the name of The Ummah, working with different artists but hadn’t did a De La Soul record.Here, they're no longer so self-conscious and it's easy to remember why you liked them enough in the first place to stick with them through the hard times.