Stakes Is High

Product Information

I’m a beginner at this vinyl thing when it comes to assessing records but this sounds really good to my ears. 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). But Stakes Is High — working with other artists and pulling in music from different places — that was a challenging album. 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. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

Robert Christgau wrote: "After almost four years, Posdnuos and company emerge from the ether like the long-lost friends they are.

I’m not sure how the record itself sounds, but the cover looks amazing and it arrived protected and in perfect condition. Bigger sound and clarity is spot on, an absolute winner of a reissue (why can't there be more like this). 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. 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.

Love the flow of it, every track is focussed and is a real pleasure to listen to - whilst most people have got/ heard 3 Feet High (and don't get me wrong it's a great album), far less people have heard Stakes is High and its a shame because it shows how much De La Have evolved as a group. 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". Stakes Is High deals with many topics, including the state of hip-hop, the commercialization of hip-hop culture, and criticism of gangsta rap. 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. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.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. 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. Naughty By Nature member Treach also took serious offense at the record, creating a feud that only died down after about a decade and a half after Stakes Is High was released.