De La Soul – Stakes Is High Lyrics – Genius
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The climactic point of De La Soul’s “Stakes is High” album serves as a criticism to the state of the world in 1996, along with a declaration that the Native Tongues are back in effect. A very sobering, serious track that differs vastly from the playful music that De La Soul has always been known for.
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
I think that the energy we put into that song was similar to that of what Marvin Gaye put into “What’s Going On.” 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.
— Posdnuos, LA Weekly, 2009
“Stakes Is High” was one of the moments where we were challenging ourselves. Everything else we were breezing through before that. We were having a good time. But Stakes Is High — working with other artists and pulling in music from different places — that was a challenging album. An album that definitely was like: We’re on our own now, let’s do this. The song and concept “stakes is high” stems from that. This is all or nothing right now. We’re doing it for ourselves.
— Dave, Rolling Stone, 2023
Maseo told Okayplayer that Q-Tip played Posdnuos
the “Stakes is High” beat and Pos pretended to be unimpressed to try and secure it.
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. “Stakes is High” came up on the beat, Pos kind of held back. He was like, “What do you think of this beat?” “Stakes Is High” beat playing and Pos was like, “It’s all right. It’s OK” but then secretly goes off in the corner and calls Dave was like, Yo! This is the fucking beat. This is it right here. I’ve got to figure out how to get it but this is it. Then went from that point on. Pos reaching out to Dilla separately.
Once he let the beat thing sit with Q-Tip for a little while and just never picked that beat. He was like, “Dilla, we need this beat.” But he made sure he got to Dilla without Tip knowing. 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. He had been dying to at least land something for the group.
