I am shorty

[Precious Roy]

I be 4-11

De La Soul - I Am I Be

 

[Incandenza]

Has there been any critical revisionism on Stakes Is High? I've always loved that album, but I recall it getting mostly negative notices when it came out.

 

[Cerebus The Aardvark]

Has there been any critical revisionism on Stakes Is High? I've always loved that album, but I recall it getting mostly negative notices when it came out.

I recall a pretty mixed opinion upon release, with the negative side getting the nod, so upon seeing this question, I thought I would take a look at Wikipedia and see if they have a section on Criticisms or whatever to see if it mentions some kind of change. No dice, except this seemingly baseless statement made in the introduction (no citations in the entire article): It received mostly strong reviews but little commercial success.

I haven't really found any evidence of revisionism anywhere aside from perhaps a dude here and there; no overarching movement I can see.

 

[Precious Roy]

Stakes is High was my introduction to De La, and then I went to 3 Ft and worked my way forward

I'm not surprised it got mediocre reviews or whatever, because it's a lot more straight forward than the previous albums and probably wasn't what critics were looking for from them at that time. It holds up great though and compared to hip hop albums that are praised today it's better than 99% of them.

The Art Official albums got fairly good reviews, right?

 

[Incandenza]

Just going from memory here, but I recall Mosaic Thump meeting with the same amount of (un)enthusiasm as Stakes Is High, with Bionix faring better critically. I liked MT a lot but never much cared for Bionix. By the time The Grind Date came out, I had more or less stopped following hip-hop, so I never checked it out.

 

[Incandenza]

de la soul ft redman oooh[original song]

Still jam this occasionally.

 

[Precious Roy]

I was going to utube songs I liked on Bionix but they are VERBOTTEN!!!!

I am Hitler

I be 4-11

 

[Incandenza]

It's been so long since I've listened to Bionix—I'm in no hurry to revisit it—that I can't recall why I didn't like it exactly. Or what I did like about it. The only thing I remember is that one track with B-Real was the worst thing De La Soul had done to that point. Hell, even though I've heard nothing off The Grind Date, I'm going to assume nothing on it was as bad as that.