To say that the Alternative Hip Hop sound of late 1980s was the responsibility of a single group of musicians would only be telling part of the truth. In fact, the Native Tongues Posse as a whole was really responsible for the emergence of the sub-genre. Alternative Hip Hop in its origin would revolve around the ideas of Afrocentrism and the celebration of unity among people of different backgrounds. This was the ethos of the Native Tongues Posse, a collective of different Hip Hop groups which was founded by the groups A Tribe Called Quest, Jungle Brothers and De La Soul.
Despite the emergence of the Alternative genre being an effort of all three groups, De La Soul did in fact release their album prior to the Posse's co-founders. Members Posdnuos, Maseo and Trugoy (now known as Dave) released 3 Feet High and Rising in '89, which by some has been described as "the Sgt. Pepper of Hip Hop". The production on the album is a collage of samples taken from cartoons, commercials, and various genres of music; this would also consequentially make them the first musical group to be sued for unauthorized sampling. The lyrics were abstract and strange in a fun loving manner. And while some received the album well, others labeled De La Soul as weirdo Hip Hop hippies due to their bizarre antics and use of peace signs and daisies on their album cover. Trying to break away from this image, De La retorted with the album De La Soul Is Dead in 1991 declaring the D.A.I.S.Y. Age dead. However in 1996 things had reached a grim point in not only the Hip Hop industry, but society as a whole. The title of their 4th album said it all, Stakes Is High.
Where as their early material was for the most part produced or co-produced by Prince Paul, Stakes Is High is the first example of Prince Paul not appearing on a De La Soul release. De La instead had turned to producing their own tracks with the help of a relatively unknown beat maker named Jay Dee from Detroit. As previously mentioned in my post on the Pharcyde, Jay Dee would go onto becoming J Dilla one of Hip Hop's most revered producers. With Dilla's help, De La released an album during an era of great consequence for Hip Hop. The East Coast-West Coast rivalry was at it's height, gangsterism and violence seemed to be what was popular at the time. The message of the Native Tongues Posse seemed lost. And while the album was overshadowed by much less socially conscious albums like Nas' It Was Written and Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt it was not only creative and interesting but provided a message of reflection at a time in Hip Hop when there was much disarray.
(Note the Maury Povich cameo)
De La Soul illustration of how they feel the shift in what's popular in Hip Hop has dire consequences for the culture is highlighted by Jay Dee's production. The main sample used here is Ahmad Jamal's "Swahililand" (who has been sampled in one of my previous posts), which was featured on his 1974 album Jamal Plays Jamal. Jamal's background as a Jazz pianist from Pittsburgh, PA comes from the Bebop days of Charlie Parker, when fast paced improvisation was the focus. As Jamal did excel in this, he wanted to make the push back to Jazz as popular music and not just a musical art form. This music focused on the timing, spacing and phrasing of your playing rather than the rate at which you played, it would later be called Cool Jazz."I'm sick of bitches shakin' asses / I'm sick of talkin' about blunts / Sick of Versace glasses / Sick of slang / Sick of half-ass awards shows / Sick of name brand clothes / Sick of R&B bitches over bullshit tracks / Cocaine and crack / Which brings sickness to blacks / Sick of swoll' head rappers / With their sicker-than raps / Clappers and gats / Makin' the whole sick world collapse / The facts are gettin' sick / Even sicker perhaps / Stickabush to make a bundle to escape this synapse"
Sample starts at 7:29
The sample used here is not only utilized to create the melody of the beat, but also the bassline. What is interesting about this bassline however, is that it is clear and pronounced in the mix, rather than washed out. In order to achieve this sort of layering, the record would most likely have had the bass panned on one side of the speakers, and the melody panned on the other. This way they could be recorded separately in Mono Left and Mono Right. The bassline sample was filtered, and then re-layered with the original non filtered sample. This is because often times when you are to do a low end filter on a bass heavy sample, it loses its tonality and ends up sounding like noise. By layering the same sample twice, Dilla would still retain enough of the natural sound of the bass guitar while also amplifying the bass.
Sample starts at 1:03
The sample first heard at 0:16 and through out the sound is a vocal sample of James Brown simply saying "Live Vibrations". The song "Mind Power" came from Brown's 1973 double album release The Payback. It was originally intended to be a soundtrack for a Blaxploitation film called Hell Up in Harlem, however the director Larry Cohen rejected the album. He had claimed the album wasn't "funky enough" which showed how much he knew, because it is now considered a landmark funk album. Also the title track of the album has the most prolific drum break sample in Hip Hop.
Stakes Is High as an album is De La Soul's reflection of what direction Hip Hop had gone. Considering the climate of 1996, they're concerns weren't without warrant. West Coast legend, Tupac Shakur would be killed in Las Vegas in September, 2 months after the release of Stakes Is High. Although it may or may not have been a conscious decision on his part, Dilla's use of James Brown, especially from a prolific album like The Payback is in some ways a motion to the past of Hip Hop. In comparison to their previous albums however, this particular one was no where near as ground breaking as their past work. But it was a powerfully insightful look into the culture, and meant the redeclaration of the Native Tongues Posse.
Stakes Is High as an album is De La Soul's reflection of what direction Hip Hop had gone. Considering the climate of 1996, they're concerns weren't without warrant. West Coast legend, Tupac Shakur would be killed in Las Vegas in September, 2 months after the release of Stakes Is High. Although it may or may not have been a conscious decision on his part, Dilla's use of James Brown, especially from a prolific album like The Payback is in some ways a motion to the past of Hip Hop. In comparison to their previous albums however, this particular one was no where near as ground breaking as their past work. But it was a powerfully insightful look into the culture, and meant the redeclaration of the Native Tongues Posse.
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