Stakes Is High at 30: The De La Soul Record I Found Late

Stakes Is High passes the test. I'm saying that up front because the 1996 critics couldn't agree on it, and I wasn't old enough to take a side.

Prefer to watch? Here's the video version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyjSc64uUMI

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I was a kid. De La Soul's fourth album came out July 2, 1996, on Tommy Boy, and I wasn't playing it. I got there years later, in high school. The title track is a Jay Dee production, from back when he was a rising producer.

Robert Christgau gave it a B+. Entertainment Weekly gave it a B. Spin and NME each gave it 6 out of 10. RapReviews gave it 10 out of 10. People didn't know how to file it.

The charts were less confused. It peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard 200 and No. 4 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. So it did fine. It just didn't become the record people name first when they say De La Soul.

It was also the first De La Soul album made without Prince Paul. According to Albumism, the group told him they wanted to produce it themselves, and he was a little bummed but understood. They did most of it on their own, with additional production from Jay Dee, Skeff Anselm, Spearhead X and DJ Ogee. The samples lean mellower and jazzier than on their earlier records.

The record opens with people describing the first time they heard Boogie Down Productions' Criminal Minded. Wikipedia describes it as the group's darkest and most serious album, about the state of hip hop, commercialization and gangsta rap. To me it sounds like a group with something to say and no interest in softening it.

The Dilla part is why I'm here. The title track blends Ahmad Jamal's "Swahililand" with vocal samples from James Brown's "Mind Power." The first time I heard it, I was taken aback by the production. I didn't know who J Dilla was yet. He's my idol now, and I was already surrounded by his work without knowing it: The Ummah with Q-Tip, the Pharcyde's "Runnin'," Common's Like Water for Chocolate and "The Light," Erykah Badu's "Didn't Cha Know?" off Mama's Gun, Slum Village's "Players," Bilal's "Reminisce," Common's "It's Your World." He was all over D'Angelo's "Feel Like Makin' Love" without a credit. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis built Janet's "Got 'Til It's Gone" on his style. He sat at the center of the Soulquarians.

"Stakes Is High" is one of those tracks that makes you fall in love with a producer's sound, the way Jay-Z's "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)" made me a fan of Kanye's.

The album also helped introduce Mos Def and Truth Enola to a wider audience. Mos Def is on "Big Brother Beat." Truth Enola is on "Pony Ride." Both are on the remix of the title track, which is the main reason the new edition is on my list.

That edition came out October 23 on A.O.I. Records, distributed by Chrysalis. The Source lists a 4LP hardcover set, a 2CD hardcover set, a digital edition, and three retail-exclusive vinyl versions, one each from Amazon, HHV and Fat Beats. Six ways to buy one record.

Past the original album, the set adds instrumental versions of the album and five other tracks:

"Chanel No. Fever."

"I Can't Call It."

A De La Soul remix of "Itzsoweezee (HOT)" featuring Yankee B.

The J Dilla remix of "Stakes Is High" featuring Mos Def and Truth Enola.

A second, alternate J Dilla remix.

Of those five, "Chanel No. Fever" and the J Dilla remix are the ones I've played over and over. So is the title track's instrumental. So is the remastered album version, obviously, and "Big Brother Beat," though that one was on the original.

TUNE Scorecard: 16 out of 20. Icon.

Timeless: 5. Stakes Is High came out in 1996, the same year as Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt, Nas's It Was Written, the Fugees' The Score, OutKast's ATLiens, 2Pac's All Eyez on Me, A Tribe Called Quest's Beats, Rhymes and Life, Lil' Kim's Hard Core, Foxy Brown's Ill Na Na, Redman's Muddy Waters, Heltah Skeltah's Nocturnal, E-40's Tha Hall of Game and Lost Boyz's Legal Drug Money. In that company, it still holds up. Timmhotep Aku put it well in Complex's ranking of the best rap albums of 1996, where Stakes Is High landed at No. 8: "In hindsight, especially when reflecting on the fates of Diddy and Suge Knight, what might have seemed like hating in '96 seems more like the loving course correction De La intended."

Updated: 4. The anniversary edition earns its place, mostly on the instrumentals and the bonus tracks.

Needle-moving: 4. It's a snapshot of hip hop at the moment conscious rap was losing ground in the mainstream to the gangster and bling of Bad Boy, Death Row and No Limit. De La tried to wake people up over great production, which is very close to what Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole and Big Sean have been trying to do lately.

Earned trust: 3. It's a safe listen from that era, but it isn't their best work. People missed what Prince Paul brought to the earlier records. "Itzsoweezee," Dave's solo cut, and "Stakes Is High" saved it, and they're still the standouts 30 years later.

I keep thinking about the 1996 critics with their B+ and their 6 out of 10. They were reviewing a 68-minute record aimed at hip hop itself, with a Dilla beat on it most of them had no reason to notice yet. I don't think that makes them wrong. I think it makes it a different record on a Tuesday in 1996 than it is now.

Which makes me wonder how many other 1996 records are about to get a second hearing.

Rest in peace, Dave. Trugoy the Dove, 1968 to 2023.