All the tracks are as original from what I can hear, no edits which is too common with Hip Hop reissues.

I’m a beginner at this vinyl thing when it comes to assessing records but this sounds really good to my ears.Stakes Is High deals with many topics, including the state of hip-hop, the commercialization of hip-hop culture, and criticism of gangsta rap. The music video for "Stakes Is High" has all three members of De La Soul on an episode of The Maury Povich Show (with Povich appearing as himself) about hip-hop culture in the 1990s and how much of an influence it is on the world, along with clips of each De La Soul member doing typical household chores (raking leaves, doing laundry, etc.

City-bred trio of Posdnuos (Pos), Dave and Maseo continued to impact Hip Hop culture with five more groundbreaking albums: "De La Soul Is Dead" ('91), "Buhloone Mindstate" ('93), "Stakes Is High" ('96), "Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump" ('00) and "AOI: Bionix" ('01). A very sobering, serious track that differs vastly from the playful music that De La Soul has always been known for.

I think that the energy we put into that song was similar to that of what Marvin Gaye put into “What’s Going On.

Bigger sound and clarity is spot on, an absolute winner of a reissue (why can't there be more like this).

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.

I’m not sure how the record itself sounds, but the cover looks amazing and it arrived protected and in perfect condition. At the end of track 9, "Long Island Degrees", a "redneck" explains why he hates rap music ("There's no music in it. Great to see so many other reviewers echoing what I'm feeling about this record - its absolute quality! Stakes Is High was mainly produced by the group themselves, with additional tracks provided by Jay Dee, DJ Ogee, Spearhead X and Skeff Anslem.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. Robert Christgau wrote: "After almost four years, Posdnuos and company emerge from the ether like the long-lost friends they are. 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. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Naughty By Nature member Treach also took serious offense at the record, creating a feud that only died down after about a decade and a half after Stakes Is High was released.