Thirty years after Stakes Is High, Posdnous and Maseo look back at the album that almost didn’t happen and talk about weed: one of them has loved it unconditionally for 30 years, and the other only gets contact highs, most recently from B-Real.
Posdnous and Maseo of De La Soul may be polar opposites when it comes to cannabis, but it hasn’t negatively affected their decades-long friendship. Pos is able to take it all in stride.
“I’ve seen Mase smoke, eat a THC ice cream and put on a THC balm,” he says, laughing. “I was like, ‘Yo, how high do you need to be right now?!’”
“I’m sick of bitches shakin’ asses/I’m sick of talkin’ ’bout blunts, sick of Versace glasses/Sick of slang, sick of half-ass awards shows…” Taken from the title track of De La Soul’s 1996 album Stakes Is High, Dave’s lyrics illustrated just how disheartened he was by the overly commercialized direction hip-hop was taking. It was the trio’s fourth album and first without longtime producer Prince Paul. Their third album, Buhloone Mindstate, had been a commercial disappointment, and Posdnous, Maseo and Dave were wondering if people even cared about De La Soul anymore.
Adding to the complexity of that period, Posdnous had contracted spinal meningitis while on tour with A Tribe Called Quest and Pharcyde and spent the better part of a month in the hospital, so he was more concerned about whether he’d be able to carry on as a touring artist. His illness also rendered him unable to properly promote Buhloone Mindstate.
“That totally put the nail in Buhloone because we was about to do a video for ‘I Am I Be,’” Pos explains. “That would have been the last single. So coming off of that sickness, for me, it was more of a life thing going into Stakes Is High. Dave was really concerned about the industry aspect. When you really listen to Stakes Is High as an album, and even as the title track, you hear me talking more about life and Dave really focusing a lot more on the industry.
“That was also the first album where the title came about before recording. Dave was very much on some like, ‘Look, I don’t even know if anyone wants to really listen to us no more.’ I didn’t really feel the same way, but I respected what he was saying. We’re just talking about it and his cousin Fudge was like, ‘Yeah, man. Stakes is high out here.’ We was like, ‘That’s it!’”
Stakes Is High, which is often described as De La Soul’s darkest album, was a risky release for them. Their debut album, 3 Feet High and Rising, was built on their senses of humor and, as Pos calls them, Prince Paul’s “zany” beats. By the time they got to Stakes Is High, the industry had changed and so had they. They initially resumed their collaborative relationship with Prince Paul, but it soon became evident they weren’t on the same page.
“The stuff he was cranking out we felt was a little too zany,” he explains. “It’s kind of like where people thought De La Soul Is Dead was going to be a dark album for whatever reason, but we still was able to have this thing with Paul and the cool, zaniness to work into like dark things—whether it was ‘Millie Pulled a Pistol’ or ‘Pease Porridge.’
“We were just adamant like, ‘Yo, Paul, the stuff you’re cranking out is not where we’re trying to be,’ so that kind of came to this decision. He was working with Gravediggaz already. And I was like, ‘We need to open this up to some other producers,’ and he was with it. He kind of fell back, then Dave took the driver’s seat.”
Aside from J Dilla, who was behind the title track, and one song each from Spearhead X, O.Gee and Skeff Anselm, De La Soul produced the entire 17-track effort. The project landed at No. 13 on the Billboard 200 and No. 4 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts, proving De La Soul was still in demand.
As Stakes Is High turns 30, Pos and Maseo are continuing to honor Dave, who died in 2023, with a deluxe version of the original. They also pressed forward with a new album last year, Cabin in the Sky, which was part of Mass Appeal Records’ seven-album series, Legend Has It. It’s been submitted for a Grammy Award in the Best Rap Album category and, if it’s nominated, would be the trio’s seventh nomination. If they won, it would mark only their second gilded gramophone, following a win in 2006 in the Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals category for Gorillaz’s “Feel Good Inc.”
All of that remains to be seen. Until then, Pos and Maseo are booked with concerts, press commitments and Stakes Is High anniversary celebrations. The way they “celebrate” is different. Maseo, a weed connoisseur, is ready to light up whenever, while Pos doesn’t smoke.
“I’ve had a great relationship with weed for the last 30 years plus,” Maseo says with his signature chuckle. “We both have loved one another unconditionally. We have an unbreakable bond. The other guys in my band don’t have the relationship I have, so I couldn’t invite weed to the studio because she has a natural body odor that some people find offensive.”
Pos, on the other hand, never imagined recreational weed would be legal, but he didn’t think it was out of the realm of possibilities.
“Being able to cross the waters and go to places like Amsterdam, I was like, ‘This could happen,’ but I wasn’t sure when it would happen,” he says. “Me, Mase and Dave would talk about, ‘Well, if it would happen, I don’t think it would happen in this state versus that state.’ Now that we are where it is, people saw the money it made and it got to where it is now. Unfortunately, even with that, it’s now at a place where the parent companies are controlling something that should now still be in the hands of the mom and pop businesses.”
Although Pos doesn’t smoke, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t had multiple contact highs by simply being around heavy smokers (we’re looking at you, B-Real).
“It’s always been secondhand smoke,” he says. “I would just be writing and all of a sudden I have the secondhand smoke take over and my brain feels a little weird. I’ve definitely allowed it to contribute to certain rhymes here and there when I’m sitting around them guys, kind of absorbing it.
“Even just being blessed to run around and promote the Cabin in the Sky album, when we sat down with B-Real, he’s smiling and he’s happy, and all of a sudden he lights up and I’m like, ‘Yep, here it comes. My brain feels a little light.’”
