When I … first heard … Stakes Is High … I was laid up in an opiate haze, recovering from wisdom tooth surgery. It was my freshman year of college in the spring of 2000 [Ed: This was 100 years ago, Skinny]. When I wasn’t throwing up, I was playing Donkey Kong 64. Stakes would become one of my favorite rap albums of all time, one of maybe five that never leaves my iPhone. I don’t love it as much as my dude Cadence Weapon, who has the album logo tatted on his forearm. Unlike 99% of other rap-themed tattoos, it looks great.
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This sentiment is best expressed on “Brakes,” which takes Kurtis Blow’s old-school jam “The Breaks” and gives it a tragic, sardonic upgrade. Blow’s version is a tour through some bummer moments you might have encountered in 1979. Your girl runs off to Japan, the IRS wants to know why you claimed your cat as a dependant and you got charged for long-distance calls to Brazil. Dangit! In De La’s version, you get HIV, shot at, robbed by your crackhead son, and get smacked with a surprise acid trip. High stakes indeed.And then there is the title track (produced incidentally by a young up-and-comer from Detroit named James Yancey). “Stakes Is High” (the song) is the exception that proves the rule for complaining about jiggy rap destroying the black community and/or America. It is so earnest, so personal, so tangibly frustrated that it becomes something bigger than just more “old man yells at cloud” rap. Dave starts out personal and non-judgemental, noting that he’s sick of bitches shaking ass and Versace glasses, whether or not they are bad for “the culture.” He’s just personally tired of that shit. For Posdanous, the laundry list of problems quickly outgrows misogyny and materialism, turning into a full-on lament about how hard it is out there. Neighborhoods are now just hoods cuz nobody’s neighbors, just animals surviving with that animal behavior. Life, after all, can get all up in your ass, baby. You better work it out.
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