Stakes Is High
Stakes Is High is the 5th studio album by the American hip hop group De La Soul, released on May 28, 1996, and it marks the trio's deliberate return to the underground after the mainstream run that began with their 1989 debut.
The title is a double meaning: the stakes, as in a high-stakes moment, are raised for the group, and the high is the one they chase through the music. It is the record that answers the question every listener carried since the 1989 single "Me Myself and I" became a top 5 hit in the US and the UK, the question of whether the group could keep making the kind of music they loved once the crowd had grown.
The album landed on the independent label Big Joo, the same label that had pressed the group's early tape releases, and it sat among the Releases from the underground that defined the 1996 season. It followed the 1991 album "Buhloone Mindstate" and the 1994 split "De La Soul Is Dead," which the group retired and pulled from circulation, and it pointed back to all of those at once, a return that was also a refusal to repeat the mainstream version of themselves.
What Stakes Is High Is
Stakes Is High is a 22-track album, longer than anything in the group's catalogue up to that point, and that length is itself part of what it is. The extra room lets De La Soul move from a tight single to a loose jam without cutting, and the album treats each track as a place rather than a product. The sound is warm and looser than the 1991 record, built on a smaller set of beats that recur and mutate across the 22 tracks, and the lyrics sit closer to the beat, less spoken over the top of it than buried inside it.
Why the Return to the Underground Mattered
The return to the underground mattered because the group had already spent 3 years deciding what it would not be. "De La Soul Is Dead" was the statement of that decision, and by 1996 the trio had spent enough time outside the mainstream chart that coming back on their own terms meant more than coming back at all. The 1996 independent scene was full of acts making music that the big labels would not touch, and Stakes Is High placed itself squarely in that company, a record for the listener who chose it rather than the one who found it on a radio rotation.
The label and the scene
The label behind the release, Big Joo, gave the group the room that a major label would not, and that room shows in the album's structure. The 22 tracks include interludes and repeats, a layout that suits a tape culture more than a single culture, and the whole record reads as something meant to be played from start to finish rather than sampled by a radio programmer.
The Tracks That Define the Album
The tracks that define the album are the ones the searchers keep coming back to, and they cluster in two groups, the singles that carried the record and the deep cuts that gave it its shape. The following list names the tracks that do the most work on the record.
- "Me Myself and I," the 1989 single that put the group on the map and returns as a reference point on the 1996 record.
- "Eye Know," the track most associated with the album and the one whose sample the searchers ask about most.
- "Breakadawn," the title track's companion and a key moment of the record.
- "Jennifer," the track that answers the question of what Jenifa taught the group about love.
- "Daisy," the closing piece that gives the album its name for the high.
The "Eye Know" sample
The "Eye Know" sample is the most asked about piece on the album, and it comes from a 1971 recording that the group flipped into a slower, darker loop. The sample is not a bright horn line or a drum break, and that choice is what makes the track sound like the 1996 record rather than the 1991 one. The group used the 1971 source as a bed, letting the vocals ride over a loop that never quite resolves, and the effect is a track that feels more like a late night than a single.
How Me Myself and I Ties to the 1989 Original
How Me Myself and I ties to the 1989 original is by way of echo rather than cover. The 1996 album does not re-record the 1989 single, and it does not need to, because the group had already spent 7 years living with the song. The reference to "Me Myself and I" on Stakes Is High is a reminder to the listener of who the group was before the stakes went high, and the contrast between the 1989 version and the 1996 context is part of the point. The 1989 single was a top 5 hit in two countries, and the 1996 album is the record that says the group would rather be the underground act it had been before that hit than the mainstream act it had become after it.
The Legacy of the 1996 Record
The legacy of the 1996 record is that it became the reference point for every later act that wanted to be an underground group and not a mainstream one. The 22-track length, the looser beats, and the refusal to chase a radio single all became markers of the genre, and the album's 1996 release date sits in the middle of a year when the independent hip hop scene was at its densest. For the listener who came to the group through "Me Myself and I" in 1989, Stakes Is High is the record that explains what the group had been doing in the 7 years between the debut and the return, and for the listener who came through the 1996 scene, it is the album that set the template for what an underground return could sound like.