let me put my boys into this instrumental piece of Magic music just to be sure that the circle is circled 2020-11-10T20:28:21Z Comment by Dmac I played the album on repeat the year I went to secondary school, and because I knew all the lyrics by rote, including the comic interludes between songs, I bewitched the coolest girl in class into choosing me as her best friend. That I was able to memorise and repeat it was unusual; I couldn’t make sense of the lessons at school. It was rough not understanding questions nor knowing how to answer them. Being able to recite 3 Feet High off by heart was a balm

Now you know, they always had this weird relationship. Tip would play Pos some music, he would play all of us music, but Pos in particular, he would play him some music because Pos helped give ideas all the time. He was always like…Pos is always right. He was always coming up with concepts. That’s why all the records you would hear him rhyme the first, because he would have these concepts pretty much laid out, which would be really cool. He was just proactive like that. The weirdest time in a writer’s life is the year between handing in a book and it coming out. You feel like a fantasist. To have decades lived in that liminal space between albums must have been tortuous for the band. I imagine it didn’t mean nothing then, when during that interminable wait, Damon Albarn asked them to do Feel Good Inc with Gorillaz – and they ended up winning their first Grammy, 16 years after their debut album. Ashon, Wil (July 1996). "De La Soul: Stakes Is high" (PDF). Muzik. No.14. p.122. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 April 2022 . Retrieved 16 July 2022. Posdnuos: Buhloone Mindstate wasn't really doing what we needed it to do. Us and Tribe [Called Quest] was on tour together and, of course, they were just on fire. We were all having great shows, but we both had the same manager, this was Rush Management, Russell Simmons and Lyor Cohen. We recall Lyor Cohen sending us down at one of the shows. Tribe was closing and he was like, "Hey, I know your album isn't doing well... You all going to have to tighten your belts, you're going to have to get out and just do it when you’re on the road." It's been more than 20 years and De La Soul's seminal album Stakes Is High still holds its own as not only a definitive work by the Long Island trio but a classic from that era. In their own words, Maseo and Posdnuos gave Okayplayer the inside scoop on the times and circumstances surrounding the record, the creative process behind specific songs, beefs with Naughty By Nature and Tupac, and how the album changed their lives, respectively.I’ve talked to Treach. He was confused, disappointed and hurt. We really talked about it. I felt like even it wasn’t taken to any physicality, we could have gotten into it in private but the record was out there and so he felt he had to make it just as public as the record. We came at it but … We’re all at a better space today. Apologizing on both ends and that was a time in rap where there was a lot of pop shots being and taken and given all across the board throughout the entire genre. On The Rift With Tupac. Posdnuos: I've always been a person who looked at Mos and Common as like...I'm always a student. I've said it time and time again. Mos hanging around and being around that entire recording process pretty much coming in and out… I was studying them. I never miss a chance to be a student because of the fact that I'm trying to pose to people that I am this legendary teacher. I never gave a shit about none of that. I feel like Stakes Is High is where me as Pos really came into trying to perfect and get better at flowing. I was improving and doing what I needed to do from the first album up until the third album and how I wrote and how I could tell a story.

As you can imagine, because they sampled everyone from Johnny Cash to Hall & Oates, Steely Dan to Liberace, all on one album, they encountered enormous legal problems getting the samples cleared for streaming.After the album's release, the group toured extensively and remained rather quiet before returning in 2000 with the first installment of their "Art Official Intelligence" series, Mosaic Thump. The song was one of the earliest mainstream productions to be handled by hip hop producer Jay Dee. The B-side to the single was "The Bizness", featuring Common. This song talks about the music industry. Brusie, David (18 June 2009). "De La Soul - Stakes Is High". Tiny Mix Tapes. Archived from the original on 2009-07-18 . Retrieved 18 June 2009. We were just trying to think about, "How can we start Stakes Is High?" We was like, "Yo, let's try to do a collage of just people saying stuff," and then we was thinking like, "Yeah, let's maybe do like when the first time someone heard Criminal Minded." Then that's when we just start gathering up people. I just left a message on my phone and whoever would call I was like, "Yo, just let me know the first time you heard Criminal Minded." Everyone just started leaving messages and telling me when they heard it and so we had put it with that music. Smith, Ethan (July 12, 1996). " Stakes Is High". Entertainment Weekly. New York . Retrieved June 13, 2012.

This is not to belittle the rest of their output – for many fans, Buhloone Mindstate is the magic record. For others, it’s De La Soul Is Dead or Stakes Is High. I just have this particular album’s imprint at a particular age. Posdnuos: Basically, at one point, what became the intro to Stakes Is High was just a remix to "Eye Patch," so that's why the rhymes actually start off the same way I did on "Eye Patch." In 2023, Billboard and Stereogum ranked the song number six and number two, respectively, on their lists of the 10 greatest De La Soul songs. [2] [3] Music video [ edit ] Maseo: That record was a milestone, that record was do or die... I mean the whole energy around developing that record, it was a crucial place of not knowing if we was going to continue or we going to be forced to go get regular jobs and become common folk... because we came off of Buhloone Mindstate which didn’t have much success at all. I didn't mean it at all in a disrespectful way. Mind you, like I said, that rhyme that was heard on Stakes Is High was written a year earlier. It was supposed to be a part of a remix. Unfortunately, after Stakes Is High came out, at some point, we realized that Naughty had a discrepancy, or maybe Treach, with that line. He thought that we were trying to diss. Mind you, we were so cool with Naughty and we were one of the first dudes, if not the first group, who put them on our show in North Carolina. We had just gained such a really cool relationship with each other, we just didn't take it seriously like it was going to go into anything bad. We was like, "Yo, whenever we run into them, we can just talk about it."I imagine there are a lot of hip-hop heads who were bright kids with undiagnosed learning difficulties, gravitating to rap as relief from the learning struggle. First music love is often a reaction to feeling like a school misfit, but in this instance, it was like my struggle with learning was reversed through the album.