A Tribe Called Quest (1990-2017): Legendary, iconic, and innovative rappers, songwriters, lyricists, composers, arrangers, producers, and teachers

SOUND PROJECTIONS

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR:  KOFI NATAMBU

FALL, 2018

VOLUME SIX       NUMBER ONE

SONNY ROLLINS

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

TEDDY WILSON

(July 14-20)

GEORGE WALKER

(July 21-27)

BILLY STRAYHORN

(July 28-August 3)

LEROY JENKINS

(August 4-10)

LAURYN HILL

(August 11-17)

JOHN HICKS
(August 18-24)

ANTHONY DAVIS

(August 25-31) 

RON MILES
(September 1-7)

 
A TRIBE CALLED QUEST
(September 8-14)

NNENNA FREELON

(September 15-21)

KENNY DORHAM

(September 22-28)

FATS WALLER

(September 29-October 5)

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/a-tribe-called-quest-mn0000478982/biography

A Tribe Called Quest

(1990-2017)

Artist Biography by John Bush

 

Without question the most intelligent, artistic rap group during the 1990s, A Tribe Called Quest jump-started and perfected the hip-hop alternative to hardcore and gangsta rap. In essence, they abandoned the macho posturing rap music had been constructed upon, and focused instead on abstract philosophy and message tracks. The "sucka MC" theme had never been completely ignored in hip-hop, but Tribe confronted numerous black issues -- date rape, use of the word nigger, the trials and tribulations of the rap industry -- all of which overpowered the occasional game of the dozens. Just as powerful musically, Quest built upon De La Soul's jazz-rap revolution, basing tracks around laid-back samples instead of the played-out James Brown fests that many rappers had made a cottage industry by the late '80s. Comprising Q-Tip, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and Phife, A Tribe Called Quest debuted in 1989 and released their debut album one year later. Second album The Low End Theory was, quite simply, the most consistent and flowing hip-hop album ever recorded, though the trio moved closer to their harder contemporaries on 1993's Midnight Marauders. A spot on the 1994 Lollapalooza Tour showed their influence with the alternative crowd -- always a bedrock of A Tribe Called Quest's support -- but the group kept it real on 1996's Beats, Rhymes and Life, a dedication to the streets and the hip-hop underground. 

 

A Tribe Called Quest was formed in 1988, though both Q-Tip (b. Jonathan Davis) and Phife (b. Malik Taylor) had grown up together in Queens. Q-Tip met DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad while at high school and, after being named by the Jungle Brothers (who attended the same school), the trio began performing. A Tribe Called Quest's recording debut came in August 1989, when their "Description of a Fool" single appeared on a tiny area label (though Q-Tip had previously guested on several tracks from De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising and later appeared on Deee-Lite's "Groove Is in the Heart"). 

 

Signed to Jive Records by 1989, A Tribe Called Quest released their first album, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, one year later. Much like De La Soul, Tribe looked more to jazz as well as '70s rock for their sample base -- "Can I Kick It?" plundered Lou Reed's classic "Walk on the Wild Side" and made it viable in a hip-hop context. No matter how solid their debut was, second album The Low End Theory outdid all expectations and has held up as perhaps the best hip-hop LP of all time. The Low End Theory had included several tracks with props to hip-hop friends, and A Tribe Called Quest cemented their support of the rap community with 1993's Midnight Marauders. The album cover and booklet insert included the faces of more than 50 rappers -- including obvious choices such as De La Soul and the Jungle Brothers -- as well as mild surprises like the Beastie Boys, Ice-T, and Heavy D. Though impossible to trump Low End's brilliance, the LP offered several classics (including Tribe's most infectious single to date, "Award Tour") and a harder sound than the first two albums. During the summer of 1994, A Tribe Called Quest toured as the obligatory rap act on the Lollapalooza Festival lineup, and spent a quiet 1995, marked only by several production jobs for Q-Tip. They returned in 1996 with their fourth LP, Beats, Rhymes and Life, which prominently featured Q-Tip's nephew Consequence and production from Jay Dee (aka J Dilla). The album was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Rap Album category and reached platinum status.

Before they released their next album, 1998's The Love Movement, the group announced it would be their final album and that they were splitting up. Each member pursued solo careers to varying degrees of success, but the call of the band proved strong enough that they reunited many times over the years. They headlined the Rock the Bells concert in 2004, toured heavily in 2006, featured on the Rock the Bells tours of 2008 and 2010, and played a series of shows in 2013, including some with Kanye West in N.Y.C. Though at the time Q-Tip stated that this was the last time the group would play together, they reunited again in November of 2015 to play The Tonight Show in conjunction with the 25th anniversary reissue of People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. 

  Sadly, Tribe co-founder Phife -- suffering from diabetes for many years and the recipient of a liver transplant -- died in March of 2016 at the age of 45. Later that year, Q-Tip announced that the group had finished a new album. The night of their Tonight Show appearance, the original four members of the group had decided to put aside their differences and start recording again. Sessions were held in Q-Tip's well-appointed home studio, and the group welcomed guests like Busta Rhymes, Elton John, Kendrick Lamar, and André 3000 to contribute. Though Phife passed before the album was finished, Q-Tip was able to power through and complete it. We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service was released in late 2016, topping the American charts and earning the group attention from a new generation of fans. 


https://observer.com/2016/09/a-tribe-called-quest-sparked-hip-hops-love-affair-with-jazz-on-low-end-theory/ 

observer music

A Tribe Called Quest Sparked Hip-Hop’s Love Affair With Jazz on ‘Low End Theory’

by Ron Hart 

9/21/16

THE OBSERVER

A Tribe Called Quest. Photo: Screen shot/YouTube

Senior year of high school is only as memorable as its soundtrack.

For the Class of 1992, it was raining masterpieces our senior year: Nevermind, Use Your Illusion I & II, Achtung Baby, We Can’t Be Stopped, Apocalypse 91: The Enemy Strikes Black, Cypress Hill, Badmotorfinger, Ten, Bandwagonesque, Steady Diet of Nothing, Laughing Stock, Metallica, Blood Sugar Sex Magick, Angel Dust, Check Your Head, Wish, the list goes on and on and on.

But perhaps no other record that year had more impact on the musical climate than A Tribe Called Quest’s legendary second LP, The Low End Theory. 

Especially for this particular senior, who was driving to school for the first time. If you hung out in the parking lot before homeroom or after dismissal in 1991, The Low End Theory an unmistakable staple you heard everyone bumping out of their cars, especially if they had a nice kickerbox in the trunk.

What was it that made this most important Tribe LP sound so nice in a booming system? Well, those beats, of course. Those perfect, soulful grooves crafted by Ali Shaheed Muhammad for MC’s Q-Tip, Phife Dawg and Jarobi White to drop science over, establishing rhythms so quintessentially aligned with each of their highly distinctive flows.

Almost none of us rolling around in the fall of 1991 were listening to much jazz, at least in my immediate circle of friends. But the funny thing is, while we were all wilding out to such faves as “Buggin’ Out”, “Check the Rhime”, “Everything Is Fair” and, undoubtedly the epic, epic posse cut “Scenario” that closes out the album, everyone who spent a significant amount of time with The Low End Theory was receiving a serious education in jazz appreciation, whether they knew it or not.

“Tribe influenced a generation of young people who had never really been exposed to jazz. They were trailblazers of a modern hip-hop generation not obsessed with violence.”—Jameio Brown

For the lay people who rocked this record back in the day, chances are the fact that every one of these songs features at least one jazz sample was of minimal concern. However, for anyone who was raised on The L.E.T., be it first, second or third hand, it was the quintessential gateway drug into the art form and its infinite universe of classic recordings comprising its genetic makeup.

Tribe were not the first hip-hop act to sample a jazz record. But they were certainly the first to feature a bonafide giant of the craft such as double-bass legend Ron Carter on a song like “Verses From The Abstract”. Carter even returns in pre-recorded form on “Skypager”, which lifts from Eric Dolphy’s “17 West” featuring the man on bass.

A quarter century later, The Low End Theroy is as ubiquitous to the language of modern jazz as Kind of Blue and A Love Supreme, its seamless fusion of beats and bop providing the seeds for future greats such as Digable Planets, J Dilla, Madlib, Greg Osby, The Roots, Flying Lotus, Kamasi, Kendrick and D’Angelo to further blur the line between jazz and hip-hop in an even more organic way than in the early ’90s. In 2016, the genres are knotted beyond the point of no return.
In commemoration of its Silver Anniversary, the Observer spoke with several modern figures on the jazz scene, plus an exclusive quote from Carter on his experience recording with Tribe, about the impact The Low End Theory has had on this most distinctive American music as the craft enjoys one of its most innovative and exploratory periods since the disco/new wave era.

Ron Carter

Q-Tip had called me and said, “I’m trying to do a record and I’m a fan of Charlie Mingus and was wondering if you could record with us.” I didn’t know who they were, so I told him, “Let me get back to you.” And I called my sons, who were into hip-hop, and asked them who this person Q-Tip is and what do you know about this band A Tribe Called Quest?

They told me they were one of the more musical groups at the time and seemed like they were more interested in making music rather than simply utilizing beats and samples. So I got back to him and said, “O.K., my sons told me this is a good thing for me to do and I trust their judgment. But I do have some caveats here. If you guys start cursing and talking like everyone else does on these records, I’m gonna unplug and go home, because that’s not my point of view. I don’t like those lyrics, I hate those kinds of words and I think they are demeaning. So if that’s what you got me into, I’m not there.”

He was immediately like, “No, no, no, we’re O.K., we’re O.K.!”

I got to the studio on time, went to the control room, plugged directly into their board, did three takes and went home. I was sorry to see them break up, but that’s what success does. However, they were really good guys and they all wanted to play piano and learn about chords. At the time, they seemed like the only ones who understood the relationship between the rhythm and the beat.

And by the way, I’m still available to anyone who wants to make some music. They keep on sampling my bass lines, but I’m still available for some live recording with hip-hop acts. So if there’s any top dog/big fish kinda guys who want to have an old man playing an antique, have them give me a call.


Robert Glasper


Tribe was my gateway to hip-hop. Literally I got into rap music because of A Tribe Called Quest. The funny thing is that it was the jazz connection, because the first thing I heard when I was like, “Wait, what’s that!” was the joint they did with Freddie Hubbard’s “Suite Sioux” off Red Clay…“Jazz (We’ve Got)”!

Being from Houston, Texas, I was listening to The Low End Theory when it came out when I was in elementary school, so I didn’t know what the hell they were talking about [laughs]. They were from Queens, while I was in Geto Boys country. So for me, it was all about the beats, and when I heard Low End Theory and “Jazz (We’ve Got)”, it just blew me away. It was really intriguing to me.


Derrick Hodge


The cool thing about The Low End Theory is that it all starts with Q-Tip and his mind, and his appreciation for, in the moment, what might be considered abstract and an abstract way of thinking. Q-Tip’s always been drawn to certain elements that he could hear the new dope thing within. Even if on the surface you might not hear it all, Tip has a knack for not only hearing it, but gravitating towards it as well.

It’s no surprise that marriage between J Dilla and Q-Tip happened. It’s just no shock, man. But it all started with Tip’s appreciation for those types of minds and that type of thinking.

And because of that, I think the music—especially on Low End Theory—has a musicality to it where an instrumentalist, whether its classical or jazz or rock or R&B or gospel, you can go do your instrument and pick up and play these songs because they’re cut up in a way that an actual horn player or bassist can play along. Songs like “Check The Rhime” and “Jazz (We’ve Got)” have a certain familiar way about them where you can play it and everybody will recognize it. The album really inhibits that feeling of natural playing.


Jameio Brown


A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory was one of the most influential albums of my life. I was not only influenced by the music, but by the culture they represented. As an African-American they reinforced the idea that to be cool was to be laid-back and intelligent, which was a contrast to groups like N.W.A. at the time. They had courage to promote being an individual.

Tribe influenced a generation of young people who had never really been exposed to jazz. They were trailblazers of a modern hip-hop generation not obsessed with violence. Sonically they fused the ’60s and ’70s with hip-hop drums. Even though my father was a jazz bassist, I didn’t feel connected to the acoustic bass until I heard them use it.

Musically and culturally they showed us the common denominators. I don’t know if I would have pursued a career as a jazz musician if it were not for what they introduced. Sampling has played a large part in the music that I have been passionate about creating because of Tribe. There are certain emotions and sounds that can only be achieved by sampling and I see that as an art. On many levels I don’t see hip-hop and jazz as different styles of music and The Low End Theory demonstrates why.


Jason Stein


Jazz has a problem finding a way to fit comfortably into contemporary culture in a way that has meaning and is not anachronistic. The Low End Theory is a great example of a band using elements of jazz in a way that felt exciting, and significant.

It also just plain sounded dope and spent months in my Walkman when I was 15. It remains an important influence to me by helping me to remember the infinite potential in the raw materials of jazz to move people’s minds, souls and especially their feet.

Jeremy Pelt


While I think Low End Theory was a record that stood out in its time, I don’t necessarily connect its brilliance with having a direct or even indirect impact on jazz when it came out. However, when you look at what some jazz artists are doing with their music now, i.e., Glasper and others, one can make an argument that there are certain elements contained in their music that harken from the things that A Tribe Called Quest incorporated in their tracks.


Makaya McCraven


Hip-hop has a long history of drawing from jazz from its inception but jazz hasn’t always been so accepting of hip-hop. Often purists question hip-hop’s musical integrity. Low End Theory was a major step in bringing respect and interest from the jazz community. Now many players of my generation grew up listening to this classic record, and it, as well as hip-hop in general, have shaped the way we hear music, approach groove, sound and composition.

Using Ron Carter on bass as well as the heavy sampling of jazz greats including Jack Dejohnette, Art Blakey, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Gary Bartz, The Last Poets and more, really opened up hip-hop as a genre with real musical integrity and value to some it’s harsher critics. A cosign from a legend such Ron Carter carries weight in a genre where purists often look down at people who “cross over.” This was especially true in the ’90s when these types of cross overs were more radical. To younger musicians who played jazz but were at home listening to hip-hop this record opened up the possibilities of pursuing new sounds and collaborations.

Low End Theory was one of the very first cassette tapes I ever purchased. Riding the line as a player and a hip-hop head was not always easy. I constantly had to try to prove that hip-hop was worthwhile musically. Low End Theory was a record I could always come back to when addressing elitists about hip-hop as a genre, pointing to the material sampled, its musicality and the depth of the rhythmic and lyrical content. Low End Theory definitely had a profound impact on me as an artist as my introduction to hip-hop and encouragement that I could follow the sounds I want to.


Anwar Marshall


The Low End Theory works as a bridge between the Jazz and Hip Hop worlds in a very unique way. The use of the upright bass, the samples that were used, and the overall sound of the mix, this record relates to jazz musicians like no other hip-hop record has.

I personally remember realizing that one of the main samples for “Butter” was Weather Report’s “Young and Fine”, which appears on their 1978 release Mr. Gone. I feel like Tribe went to great lengths to relate to instrumentalists in ways that other hip-hop groups were’t concerned with. I thought it was telling for them to feature Mr. Ron Carter on the second song of the record.

Unfortunately, the importance of the upright bass is over looked in live jazz performance and on jazz recordings, but with Bob Power on the mixing board, Tribe accentuated that sound and presented it to younger audience in a way that was palatable and really groovy.

Also, there’s at least three or four tracks that are just bass, drums and vocals, which functions as a jazz trio of sorts. This was one of the first hip-hop records that I was introduced to, and it took me years to realize how unique and ground breaking it is!


Macie Stewart


To help put things in perspective, Low End Theory and I are about the same age. That means my view of the record has always been from its future looking back, and at the age of 15 it was my gateway into hip-hop.

There was something about it that resonated with me beyond the music I had been studying and listening to at the time, catching my ear with its samples of my father’s favorites like Weather Report, Cannonball Adderley and Funkadelic. It made that music seem like something I had discovered on my own, and encouraged me to delve deeper into the world of jazz and all that it entails.
Like Q-Tip says in ‘Excursions”:

“You could find the abstract listening to hip-hop/ My pops used to say, it reminded him of bebop/ I said, well daddy don’t you know that things go in cycles/ The way the Bobby Brown is just ampin like Michael.”

Music moves in cycles. Jazz is creeping its way back into the mainstream time and time again, I can see it in the recent music of Kendrick Lamar, Robert Glasper, Thundercat and even David Bowie.

The Low End Theory and Tribe sampled jazz in such a unique way that it enabled their voices to solo effortlessly over the track much like Dizzy or Coltrane would. That record defied boundaries and created a space for music to exist just for the sake of itself. It took something familiar to the youth (hip-hop) and made it accessible to the previous generation by paying homage to all of the great artists that came before them, and pushed the generations after them to explore what it means to make music. In that way it continues to feed future musicians, encouraging them to create by building on traditions of the past.


Eric Slick, Dr. Dog


I remember first hearing The Low End Theory in 2007. My best friend Dominic turned me onto it. We went to jazz school together, but I soon dropped out. I thought the whole thing was just so square. Dom stuck it out and ended up playing on countless sessions with Dice Raw, Peedi Crakk and members of the Roots Crew. He was aghast that I had never heard Tribe, so we drove around and listened to all of Low End Theory.

I remember thinking that the album was somehow simultaneously futuristic and stark. I was also disappointed in myself that I’d never given it a shot before.

Over the course of the next few years, I would go to Silk City Diner in Philly every Monday night for a live jazz/hip-hop improv night. I’m fairly certain The Philadelphia Experiment started there. Another jazz/hip-hop bridge! Questlove, Anthony Tidd, Spanky and many MCs and other luminaries would come through and devastate the place.

I remember sitting in and feeling so inspired to try something different. It was a jazz school education that I didn’t have to pay tuition for. It’s hard to think of sessions like that happening without the forward-thinking influence of Low End Theory, and I’m incredibly grateful for it.

Shabaka Hutchings, Shabaka and the Ancestors


One of the remarkable aspects of this album is the opening phrase from Q-Tip—”You could find the abstract, listening to hip-hop/ my pops used to say it reminded him of bebop/ I said well daddy don’t you know that things go in cycles.”

This is an artist overtly positioning his music, and the music of his generation, within a lineage stemming from jazz yet manifested through a music form championing a very different set of aesthetic values.

This quote made me think at a young age about how the musical sensibilities of a given community can be represented in differing forms/genres across generational lines. It also made me start considering the role of the artist himself in framing the way his music is perceived (as opposed to academics and “historians”). This has definitely influenced my desire to take the reins in articulating the historical forces, which comprise the music I make.


Mark Guiliana


Low End Theory is a modern day masterpiece. The carefully selected samples, often from seminal jazz records made decades earlier, provide a warm and organic sonic foundation for Tribe’s masterful rhymes.


Corey King


This album was definitely a defining moment in my life. I remember listening to it in my uncle’s car and knowing instantly that I would pursue music. This record not only brought my generation to love hip-hop but also, to a certain degree, educated my generation on jazz music. The bass lines sampled on this album were genius and the delivery from Phife and Q-tip was reminiscent to a horn player’s phrasing over a blues.

In high school, my friends and I would try and arrange jazz standards with ideas inspired by The Low End Theory. This was years after this record was released and it was still buzzing in my network of friends. The Low End Theory’s colors and layers were ahead of its time. In my opinion, it was a total game changer.


Matt Moran, Slavic Soul Party


When I was a student at Berklee College of Music I read that a hip-hop group called A Tribe Called Quest had put out a jazz-influenced record, and I went out and bought it almost immediately (on cassette). I listened to it about three times in a row, trying to figure out what was going on.
For me, deep in an obsessive and still immature relationship to jazz, the album was a bit of a revelation: while it sampled a lot of jazz records—and what a thrill to hear a shout-out to Ron Carter in popular culture!—it didn’t feel at all like jazz to me, in fact it felt like its opposite. It started with an MC saying that hip-hop today was the be-bop of its day, but I wasn’t hearing it, and that was a shot across the bow.

It was my first visceral awareness that what I loved about jazz was not what most of America heard in jazz; to me, the digital looping of a few notes or bars was the very opposite of jazz, and the expressionist spirit of those instrumentalists had been harshly confined. It was a lesson in orchestration: the instruments used and how they sounded was more important to listeners than what was actually played.

Over the years I listened to the album occasionally, and gradually gained an appreciation for the cultural significance of the album, and the artistic goal of creating a new African-American music that showed respect for jazz. I came to love that there was a contemporary dance music being made that did use the orchestration of jazz, when those sounds were being increasingly sidelined in popular culture.

Jarobi White, Q-Tip, Phife Dawg and Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest perform in Austin, Texas, at SXSW. Photo: John Sciulli/Getty Images for Samsung

Ben Wendel


When I was growing up in Los Angeles, I had a record/tape/radio player. Most of what I listened to was jazz LPs that my neighbor gave me and hip-hop from a 24-hour AM station called KDAY. When you are 13, you don’t necessarily categorize music—you listen to everything with open ears. I was moving between John Coltrane, Charles Mingus and Miles Davis and Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul and Busta Rhymes. It felt seamless—even then I felt like there was a connection between these two art forms.

I can look back now and see that in fact there has been a long history between jazz and hip-hop. I would argue that hip-hop is jazz in the larger context, or at least part of the continuum of improvised music. Tribe was the first group I discovered using jazz masters like Ron Carter in their recordings. Since then, there have been so many more examples of this connection, and not surprisingly those artists/albums tend to be my favorite.

A few collaborations that come to mind include Mos Def working with Robert Glasper, Q-Tip working with Kurt Rosenwinkel, Snoop Dogg working with Terrace Martin and Kendrick Lamar working with Kamasi Washington and Thundercat.

Thanks to Terrace Martin, I actually got to tour with Snoop Dogg briefly. The feeling I came away with from that experience is that all music is interconnected and, at the highest level, free of genre. That’s what I feel I have learned from groups like Tribe Called Quest—that true creativity is open to any and all input.

Culture Desk

The Unlikely, Triumphant Return of A Tribe Called Quest

by Amanda Petrusich

December 1, 2016

The New Yorker 

The new album from A Tribe Called Quest, “We Got It from Here . . . Thank You 4 Your Service,” is about trying to be a better person: to engage with the world in deeper, more mindful, and more loving ways.  Photograph by Chad Batka / The New York Times / Redux

On a recent Friday evening, the hip-hop journalist Elliott Wilson had gathered Q-Tip and Jarobi White, two members of A Tribe Called Quest, along with the rapper Busta Rhymes and the producer Consequence, two recent Tribe collaborators, onstage at Webster Hall, a club in the East Village. The event was part of #CRWN, an interview program hosted by Wilson, the founder of the Web site Rap Radar and a former editor-in-chief of XXL; the show is recorded in front of a live audience and later broadcast on the music-streaming service Tidal. All five men were seated on tufted red-velvet chairs.

A week earlier, A Tribe Called Quest had released “We Got It from Here . . . Thank You 4 Your Service,” its first new album in eighteen years. That same week, the group was the musical guest on an episode of “Saturday Night Live,” hosted by Dave Chappelle—the first to air after the election. At Webster Hall, Q-Tip, who was wearing shiny leather pants and a leopard-print coat, described it as “the blackest ‘S.N.L.’ ever”—or at least, he suggested, the blackest since 1975, when Richard Pryor and Gil Scott-Heron appeared on the show together. Early estimates indicated that “We Got It from Here” was about to début at No. 1 on the Billboard chart. (It did.) The mood in the room was appreciative, grateful: here, at least, were developments that felt redemptive.

Nobody was expecting A Tribe Called Quest to announce a new album in 2016. Last spring, Phife Dawg, one of the group’s founding members, died, at age forty-five, of complications related to his diabetes. The group had been on some kind of vague but seemingly interminable hiatus since 1999, just after the release of its fifth LP, “The Love Movement.” Its members reunited periodically for live performances, but there were complicated and long-standing interpersonal tensions between Q-Tip and Phife. The band’s influence might have been permanently threaded through the pop charts, but a true return seemed unlikely.

The glimpses, though, had been tantalizing. In late 2015, the original lineup—Q-Tip, Phife, White, and the d.j. and producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad—appeared on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of their début album, “People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm.” They performed a single from that album, “Can I Kick It?,” with the Roots, Fallon’s house band and a hip-hop institution on its own. In the footage, Fallon, who is famously excitable, appears to be quivering with anticipation as he introduces them. (After the performance, when Q-Tip disappears from the stage, Fallon hollers “Oh, my God!” five times.)

“Can I Kick It?” samples the spindly, loping bass line from Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” and bits of “What a Waste,” by the British new-wave act Ian Dury and the Blockheads; “Spinning Wheel,” by the jazz organist Dr. Lonnie Smith; “Dance of the Knights,” by the Russian pianist and composer Sergei Prokofiev; and “Sunshower,” by the swing-influenced disco outfit Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band. This sort of caste-free cross-pollination seems unremarkable now, in an era in which everything is instantly available and unmoored in time, but in the early nineteen-nineties Tribe’s eclectic and carnivorous sampling felt bold, almost obscene. It is, at least, a metaphor for the group’s ideological mission—a reiteration of the idea that the generous intermingling of cultures yields beauty and understanding. “Can I Kick It?” is a docile song that opens with a self-ratifying call and response: “Can I kick it? Yes, you can.” Q-Tip’s voice—nasal, mousy, bookish—is steadying. He remains disinterested in the histrionics that plague less confident m.c.s.

For years, there was a mumbled consensus that A Tribe Called Quest, with its socially conscious lyrics and avaricious sampling, was hip-hop for college-educated white people who were frightened by Ice Cube. This is a reductive and unproductive idea, of course, but it is probably somewhat true—though the group also inspired plenty of young black artists, too. (“Tip’s kind of like the father of all of us, like me, Kanye, Pharrell,” André 3000, one half of the Atlanta-based duo OutKast, recently told the Times.)

The two highest-charting rap songs in 1990—the year that A Tribe Called Quest released its début—were Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” and M.C. Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This.” In Los Angeles and Miami, groups like N.W.A. and 2 Live Crew were making artful and provocative records—building a vehement case for rap as a reimagining of folk music, a medium for populist unease, distrust, and insurgency—but for most casual American listeners hip-hop was a novelty genre. You either built a clever, hyper-verbal, honking pop song around a familiar hook or you seethed.

A Tribe Called Quest suggested a different path. The group’s gentler, more cerebral approach borrowed plainly from the spirituality and rhythms of jazz, and, along with De La Soul, Queen Latifah, Monie Love, and Jungle Brothers, Tribe became the nucleus of a New York City-based collective known as Native Tongues. The movement was deeply Afrocentric, preoccupied by obscure samples sourced from rare vinyl, and resistant to violence and misogyny as lyrical themes.

The electricity of last year’s “Tonight Show” performance is what facilitated the recording of new material. “We were talking so much shit that night. It was crazy—it was a great night,” Q-Tip recalled. Tribe reconciled, and the group, along with a cabal of guests—including Kendrick Lamar, Jack White, André 3000, Elton John, Kanye West, Anderson Paak, and Talib Kweli—retreated to Q-Tip’s New Jersey home, where he keeps a professional studio. He was insistent that the work be done there, collaboratively. Verses would not be phoned in. A giggly, domestic warmth is palpable on some tracks; this is a place artists get to only when they have been alone in a basement for too many hours, stabbing at cartons of congealing takeout. But Phife, who was receiving dialysis treatments, might have been weakened by the work. “He basically gave his life to make this album,” Jarobi White said.

“We Got It from Here” is a record about trying to be a better person: to engage with the world in deeper, more mindful, and more loving ways. This has been a theme for A Tribe Called Quest since the group’s outset. Recorded several months before the election, the album feels farseeing if not prophetic in its accounting of current affairs. “The world is crazy and I cannot sleep,” Q-Tip announces on “Melatonin.” (His advice? “Pop melatonin like they Swedish Fish.”) On “We the People . . . ,” he offers a plainspoken entreaty for solidarity and understanding: “When we get hungry, we eat the same fucking food—the ramen noodle.” The chorus, meanwhile, is a recounting of a nightmarish America, in which Mexicans, black folks, poor folks—all must go. “Muslims and gays, boy, we hate your ways,” Q-Tip sings.

At the #CRWN taping, the election results were still on Q-Tip’s mind. He described the surge of protesters thronging Fifth Avenue, stomping uptown toward Trump Tower during the group’s “S.N.L.” performance. “I think people voted for him out of anger—from a lack, from not-having,” Q-Tip said. “For people to look at this record, the timing—even if it’s not doing anything other than making them feel better—that’s beyond all of us.” There was also a sense that the album had been palliative for the group itself, in more personal ways. The members were able to offer a posthumous gift to their friend. It was Phife’s birthday that week. “Phife is looking down and laughing his ass off at all this shit,” Q-Tip said.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Amanda Petrusich is a staff writer at The New Yorker, and the author of “Do Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78rpm Records 
 


https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/a-tribe-called-quests-the-low-end-theory-10-things-you-didnt-know-106475/

Home Music Music News

September 24, 2016 

A Tribe Called Quest’s ‘The Low End Theory’: 10 Things You Didn’t Know

From the N.W.A influence to the “Butter” fight, read little-known facts about the 1991 hip-hop landmark

by Mosi Reeves
Rolling Stone

 

 

In honor of the 25th anniversary of A Tribe Called Quest's 1991 landmark 'The Low End Theory,' read 10 facts you likely didn't know about the album. Al Pereira/Michael Ochs Archives 

Released on September 24, 1991, A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory is the quintessential moment where hip-hop let its jazz muse fly. Others – most notably Gang Starr – had explored fusions between jazz and hip-hop, but Q-Tip, Phife Dawg and Ali Shaheed Muhammad evoked a cool bebop ethos that none had achieved before. They metaphorically drew comparisons between their lyrical gems and jazz players like Lonnie Smith, Grover Washington, Jr. and Ron Carter, the latter joining the Theory sessions to add his supple bass notes to tracks like “Excursions” and “Buggin’ Out.” Numerous moments linger in hip-hop’s firmament, whether it’s Q-Tip’s “4,080” rule for record labels; oft-sampled lines like Q-Tip’s “wait back it up, wait, easy back it up”; or boom-tastic cipher session “Scenario,” which turned Busta Rhymes into a star and inspired years of rah-rah chants from Onyx, Black Moon and more. 

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of one of the greatest hip-hop albums, here are 10 things you might not know about The Low End Theory.

1. In order to make The Low End Theory, Q-Tip had to pull Phife off the street.

Many of us are still mourning the March 23rd death of Phife Dawg, whose vocal interplay with Q-Tip resulted in some of the most treasured music in hip-hop history. But back in 1990, he was still a Jamaica, Queens teenager more interested in having fun and chasing girls than pursuing a rap career. That’s why he only made brief appearances on the group’s debut, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm.

In a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone, Phife remembered, “A couple of months before we started working on Low End, I just happened to run into Q-Tip on the train leaving from Queens going into Manhattan. He was like, ‘Yo, I’m about to start recording this next album. I want you on a couple of songs, but you have to take it serious.’ … I took that into consideration along with the last couple of shows we did for that first album. I saw how fruitful things could get.”

2. N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton helped inspire Tribe. 
 
The Compton squad’s studio debut is widely known as the greatest gangsta rap album of all time. Less remembered but equally important is how Dr. Dre flipped Public Enemy and the Bomb Squad’s barrage of funky noise to fit a West Coast aesthetic; making key interludes out of samples of black comedy pioneers like Rudy Rae Moore. It was Dre’s next-level production techniques that inspired Tip and Muhammad. “I remember driving with Ali, I was like, ‘Yo, we gotta make some shit like this,'” Tip told RBMA in 2013. “Dre is such a master the way it was laid out.”


3. Phife had to fight for his “Butter” spotlight. 

Q-Tip originally planned for “Butter” to be another mic-trading session, but Phife wanted the track for himself. “We had a quasi little tiff over it,” the former told VH1 in 2011. Eventually, Phife wrested control, and turned “Butter” into a lyrical showcase where he ironically contrasted his “smoothness” with his frequent girl problems. Meanwhile, Tip rocked on the hook. “How I was on the chorus and how [Phife] was doing the rhyme … it just felt like if it was the Beatles, and John would sing lead on one and then Paul would sing lead on another and John would be backing him up,” said Tip.

4. Competition between De La Soul and Tribe led to Vinia Mojica’s hook on “Verses from the Abstract.”

Vinia Mojica is one of the great, unsung session vocalists of the Nineties, landing on tracks by Heavy D, Mos Def and many more. Although she appeared on People’s Instinctive Travels skits as part of the crowd noise, her breakout moment came when she sang the incandescently sunny hook for De La Soul’s 1991 summer hit, “A Roller Skating Jam Called Saturdays.” “The boys had a lot of love-hate rivalries. … They always wanted to one up each other,” Mojica said in a 2012 interview with Revive. “I think that’s why Q-Tip asked me to do something for their album, even though I was on their first album in the snippets in between.” More poignantly, Q-Tip also gave a dedication to Mojica’s mother near the end of “Vibes and Stuff.” “My mother had died during the time of the making of their second album,” she explained.

5. “Industry Rule #4,080” may refer to Jive Records.

Throughout the years, Q-Tip has been somewhat coy about the inspiration for his memorable “Check the Rhime” line: “Industry rule number 4,080, record company people are shadyyyyyyy.” In the excellent The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop, Dan Charnas speculates that the widely quoted “rule” resulted from Tribe’s increasingly fractious dealings with Jive Records, as well as changes in their management. “The members of A Tribe Called Quest were teenagers when they signed,” he writes. “It was only after their first album was released and they began reviewing the budget for their second that they became aware of the tangle of deals to which they were bound.” When the group switched from Red Alert Productions to Rush Artist Management, Tribe demanded more advances in order to deal with the resulting costs of separation, so Jive extended their contract to one more album. The red tape took over a year to untangle, and left an air of mistrust between Tribe and Jive, resulting in bitter Theory cuts like “Show Business.” Meanwhile, “4,080” has entered rap lexicon as shorthand for record label chicanery.

6. Phife Dawg’s stray shots almost led to bloodshed.

It’s a legendary tale of beef from hip-hop’s pre-Bad Boy vs. Death Row days: When Phife Dawg rapped “Strictly hardcore tracks, not a New Jack Swing,” Teddy Riley’s protégés Wreckx-N-Effect, who landed a major pop-rap hit in 1990 with “New Jack Swing,” took offense. On March 16, 1993, their crew retaliated by punching Q-Tip in the eye outside a Run-DMC concert at Radio City Music Hall. To avoid further violence, the Zulu Nation brought the two factions to the Nation of Islam’s Muhammad Mosque #7 in Harlem, where Minister Conrad Muhammad brokered a truce. However, no one seemed to mind Phife Dawg’s Vanilla Ice dis on “The Scenario (Remix)”: “Vanilla Ice platinum? That shit’s ridiculous!”

7. Pete Rock made the original “Jazz (We Got).”

The song heard on The Low End Theory is a rearrangement of a beat Q-Tip heard while visiting Pete Rock. “One time the ‘Jazz’ beat was already playing in the drum machine. I went to answer the door and left the beat playing. He came downstairs like, ‘What the fuck is that?'” Pete Rock told Wax Poetics in 2004. “He knew what I used and took the same elements, and made it the exact same way.” Tip, for his part, claims that he got permission to remake it. His shout-out on “Jazz (We Got)” – “Pete Rock for the beat, ya don’t stop” – was a tacit acknowledgement of the beat’s origins. 

8. “Scenario” originally included more members of the Native Tongues.

As Tribe and Leaders of the New School worked on “Scenario,” word spread amongst the Native Tongues fraternity. Eventually, Posdnous from De La Soul, Dres and Mista Lawnge from Black Sheep, group manager “Baby” Chris Lighty (who passed away in 2011), and even enigmatic fourth Tribe member Jarobi snapped on it. In Brian Coleman’s book Check the Technique, Tip remembered, “We didn’t know which one to use. We wanted to get everybody on there, but it was still obvious which one was the best, and we went with that one for the final album version.” A subsequent remix featured Kid Hood, a previously unknown rapper who was murdered two days after recording his verse. The rest of the Native Tongues’ raps remain unreleased.

9. Q-Tip wrote part of Busta Rhymes’ iconic rap on “Scenario.” 

Busta Rhymes’ legendary “rawr rawr, like a dungeon dragon” fireworks at the end of “Scenario” is all his. However, Q-Tip wrote the handful of bars – “I heard you rushed, rushed and attacked” – in the middle of Tip’s verse. “He had his rhyme written and he told me to say his part. He did it in a Busta Rhymes style so when I did it, it sounded like it,” Busta told XXL in 2012. “He wanted me to come in on his part, set me up.” In turn Busta concluded “Scenario” with one of the greatest rap verses of all time.

10. The Low End Theory marked the beginning of the end of Native Tongues.

During the recording sessions for The Low End Theory, Q-Tip decided to switch from pioneering New York DJ and Native Tongues mentor Red Alert to Russell Simmons’ Rush Management, with Chris Lighty as their point man. The split opened wounds that never truly healed between Tribe and De La, and on the other side, the innovative, perpetually underrated Jungle Brothers. “Jungle didn’t fuck with us [after the switch]. Everybody was hurt,” Tip told Vibe in a 2007 story on the rise and fall of the influential crew. In the same article, Afrika Baby Bam added, “[People] have been trying to erase the Jungle Brothers out of the books, when I was the one that started the whole thing.” 

In This Article: A Tribe Called Quest, Q-Tip

https://cultmtl.com/2017/01/a-tribe-called-quest-interview-2016/

Music | News

An interview with A Tribe Called Quest

by DARCY MACDONALD
January 1, 2017
Cult#MTL

 Jarobi and Q-Tip

It’s fair to say that the year 2016 AD hit like 366 consecutive “what in the actual fucks?” to the left hemisphere. Predictable from the outset only as a leap year, it felt more like a plunge on a lotta levels. 

Finished or done, puttin’ some respek on 2016 seems to be a tough prospect for many.

But if you lean that way, hip hop carried you through. If anyone put out a bad rap record this year, I don’t really know. There was too much good shit to choose from, new music that for whatever reason feels timely and timeless at once, making 2016 a pleasure not only to keep up with, but a  year to remember forever. If the album format is truly dying, 2016 must have been too busy racking up genius musician souls to have noticed. And no one could attest to either of those points more this year than A Tribe Called Quest.

You can’t blame the calendar. But when March 22 of this year took Queens, NY native Five Foot Assassin, Malik Izaak “Phife Dawg” Taylor — aka Phife, the Phifer, Mutty Ranks and Donald Juice, to mention a few — hip hop found its place at the ongoing rock star wake that was 2016.

At 45, the smooth-flowing, hyper-quotable bar spitter succumbed suddenly to a lifelong diabetes battle, leaving his bandmates, contemporaries and fans worldwide in grief.

A little over year ago, A Tribe Called Quest had just reissued their debut LP, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, commemorating its 25th anniversary with fresh packaging and newly mastered versions of the classic material therein. Reuniting for a rare televised performance on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, the Tribe, backed by brothers-in-arms the Roots, treated fans to a powerful rendition of a signature track, “Can I Kick It?”

It felt too good to be true, but for five minutes or so, A Tribe Called Quest were back. Phife Dawg, his lifelong homie Q-Tip, their DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad and their “spiritual essence,” less seen and heard over time but still very much a constant force in the group’s energy, Jarobi White (“sometimes ‘Y’” to Midnight Marauders appreciators) gave it all for a segment that felt historic and, to fans longing for even a hint that the foursome would return, just right.

And that was supposed to be it, really. The Tribe had, since disbanding in 1998, done a handful of reunion shows, at Rock the Bells and on tour for a few dates with Kanye West, most notably. Michael Rappaport’s somewhat controversial 2011 documentary on the band highlighted the personal divisions between Tribe members — especially Phife and Tip — making the idea of a comeback more remote than ever in the minds of many fans. And Phife’s death four months after the Fallon appearance seemed to make it a moot point.

At this time last year, myself and fellow Montreal-based music journo Erik Leijon were getting ready for a year-end radio special, and we thought it would be cool to invite someone from the band to discuss their celebrated TV one-off, the album reissue and Christmas rap tunes, for good measure. I’d had the privilege of speaking to both Phife and Shaheed in the past, and getting Q-Tip seemed like a stretch on short notice.

I’d followed Jarobi (a professional chef with cool pop-up concepts in NYC and around the U.S. on the go constantly) on social media for a while and figured I’d ask this more reclusive personality for a few moments, which he gladly obliged.

All in good fun, we talked about the past and present, his culinary passions (White left full-time Tribe duties early on to pursue a career as a chef) and of course, the future. Any chance of A Tribe Called Quest burying their respective hatchets and getting on the road or in the studio?

Jarobi deflected the question with a subtle, “You never know”-type reply, pretty much as expected. What he obviously couldn’t tell us was that the band were already deep in the cut at Q-Tip’s home studio, laying down the foundation for what would become their final album, We Got It From Here…Thank U For Your Service.

Announced just three weeks prior to its Nov. 11 release date, news of a new Tribe album caught swift mega-buzz. Who produced it? How would the loss of the Phife Dawg affect the outcome? Would it be good? Who would guest? Could it possibly meet the standards that ATCQ’s legacy still thrives on, nearly two decades after their last studio excursion?

The near-immediate consensus among heads when the record dropped a day early was formed by the end of the first track: A Tribe Called Quest, representing, once again. We Got It From Here… lives up to its title’s promise in every conceivable fashion, not only satisfying longtime listeners but actually hitting #1 in over 30 countries in its first week.

Lest we forget, the album appeared just days after the U.S. election. Its most official launch party yet remains a “divinely” timed Saturday Night Live musical guest slot for Tribe, while Dave Chappelle made his own television comeback as host. If there’s such a thing as a good time to make some more history, ATCQ couldn’t have set the clock any more precisely.

And the moment, lovely as it was, came with more than a touch of the bittersweet. The SNL performances honoured Phife Dawg’s living legacy in a fashion only a group as visionary as A Tribe Called Quest could ever grasp well enough to manifest in sight and sound. Tip, Shaheed and Jarobi — and later longtime collaborators Busta Rhymes and Consequence — showed they were out to be on top with their friend, and for their friend, but never without him.

Jarobi and Phife met in their early double-digits, their shared love of hip hop being a significant focal point of their forged friendship. Tip and Phife, as has been well documented, were inseparable from toddler-hood on, growing up together side by side with hip hop. Jarobi meshed with the pair as they all began to jam in their early teens, setting the stage for the Tribe.

“That’s my brother,” Jarobi says, still audibly shaken and affected by the loss of Phife Dawg.

I spoke to Jarobi again this December, with a decidedly different tone to the proceedings in light of the year that was. Again, the MC, who shines on this new album in a whole new light, lent his time gladly and candidly, despite the pain so clear in his voice at times.

What follows is the entire transcript of that conversation. We talked about the new album, the circumstances of its manifestation, the loss of Phife, the year in music, Anderson .Paak, Kanye West, De La Soul and more.

Jarobi has long made clear he will speak only when he feels necessary, so it is with great respect that we bring you this conversation with one of 2016’s biggest newsmakers in music.

Darcy MacDonald: So we spoke exactly a year ago today, I realized earlier. Tribe had just reissued People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm for the 25th anniversary, and you had all been on Fallon, and our conversation was in the spirit of that fun, that day.

But I asked you about future plans for A Tribe Called Quest. I guess you were keeping a lot under your hat. And there’s a certain symmetry at play here.

Jarobi: Absolutely. We had already started working on the album by then.

DM: How much can you reasonably say you ever saw coming in the year that was 2016, and what stands out the most?

Jarobi: (kinda half-laughing) Shit, 2016 was a fuckin’ horrible year, like a fuckin’ terrible year. One of the worst of my life. What stands out the most? I mean, the passing of…losing my brother. You know what I mean?

DM: Yeah.

Jarobi: That’s definitely like, there’s nothing that has shaped or impacted my life, nothing even comes close. Like, the record, like — nothing comes close to that.

DM: In working through that grief, what did that do to you personally in terms of getting the new project to see the light of day? Where do you stand now?

Jarobi: You know, I don’t really know. People ask me that, like ‘How does it feel?’ and all that and I can’t really explain it. Like, I’m happy that the fans and people feel like they got what they wanted from us, you know what I’m sayin’? I’m super happy they’re enjoying it and feel good about the project. But uh, you know, I wish that Phife was here to see how much all of these people love us.
It’s truly, truly, truly, truly humbling. For us not to have put out a record in so long and people still pay attention, in itself, is crazy. (laughs)

DM: Did you have a chance to really go in with Phife in the studio, and get creative together?

Jarobi: Me and Phife…I sat with him as he wrote every word on this album. Every syllable. I sat with him. Every syllable. If that’s any indication.

DM: What do you think, whether on this record or over time, that the particular chemistry you two shared brought to Tribe as a whole?

Jarobi: Number one, that’s my brother, and creatively (we were) totally symbiotic and shit, man, because we logged in all the hours together. If he was writing something and was like “What’s the next word?” it’s like, “Blam!” And vice-versa of course.

DM: In retrospect, now that you hear the album as a complete work, in terms of both before and after Phife’s “move to the stars,” as it were, how do you feel about the end result and how does it help you frame your friend’s legacy, as well as that of your band?

Jarobi: I can only speak for myself. This album is definitely a living tribute to Phife. And it’s very gratifying for this shit to be #1 in like, 30 countries or whatever it is? (laughs) Know what I’m sayin’? Wherever Phife’s sitting, he’s like, “That’s aight!” Definitely.

DM: So the timing of the release and the SNL appearance alongside the election of Trump was sorta perfect in terms of Tribe’s contributions to relevant message music through the band’s early history. The album was released on Veteran’s Day, and “thank you for your service” is a phrase associated to battle vets.

How much of that was planned — be that the album or SNL appearance — to line up with the election, and how much of the timing was coincidence?

Jarobi: There’s no such thing as coincidence, firstly. Coincidence is just a symptom of being prepared.

Everything about this album is divinely inspired. That’s why I have a hard time, when they’re like “Yo, Jarobi! You destroyed this shit, you killed this shit!” I have a hard time being like, “Oh yeah, I was dope up in it!” Because shit, this whole process was like, I put my hand on a writing instrument and put that on a paper and that shit just starts fuckin’ breathing. So even things I’m talking about, I had a different idea going in of how I would present myself and shit.

DM: In what way?

Jarobi: Think like, a song like “Enough!!” You know? Like, cool, playful, nerdy. But serious times required serious words and I had to speak to all the shit that was going on while we was in the studio. That’s just… that’s just fuckin’ crazy. ‘Cause we locked ourselves in, me and Tip, and grinded it out. We watched a lot of Black exploitation movies, a lot of rock documentaries, and just keeping up with current events. And that led to the subject matter that’s on this album, man.

And the timing of the SNL appearance and being on that, with the timing of the album release and the election and all that… it’s like I said man. Some of these things are just divinely inspired.

DM: I read the Wax Poetics interview with you guys this year — your final interview as a group with Phife — where the author asked about the subject matter of People’s and you were quoted as saying, “At that time, in the late 1980s, police brutality, Afrocentrism and STDs were all hot button issues that we were dealing with in society. The most important thing in our music was the truth and reality of it.”

So now in light of that, and these times and history’s propensity to repeat itself, what do you think the return of Tribe potentially represents at this juncture in U.S. social history?

Jarobi: This (reality now) feels like the same desperations that we were in at that time, on this album. Shit, even Chuck said this shit back in those days, like, “Cycles, cycles, life runs in cycles.” That’s how it’s been. I guess that’s why we were awoken, you know?  Because the times repeat themselves. And I dunno, maybe because of our work ethic and our aesthetic, we’re maybe people who can better articulate this shit for for people right now. I dunno! (laughs) You know what I’m sayin’?

It’s hard to analyze this shit, it’s beyond analyzing.

DM: So I appreciate what you said about not feeling one way or the other about the personal accolades you’ve gotten with this album, but you do kill it man. And in particular, you have a big tune on here with Consequence and Anderson .Paak, who is gonna go out on top of 2016 as a breakthrough artist of the year. What are some of your thoughts on .Paak, and on that collaboration?

Jarobi: Yo man. I just got back from L.A. And I just saw Anderson .Paak perform at the motherfuckin’ Palladium. Jeeee-sus Christ, man! Jesus Christ. This dude is the truth. The truth. I mean you listen to the album be like, “Goddamn, this is phenomenal!” But shit man, watching that shit live? His performance? His command of the crowd, the showmanship…

DM: Just wild.

Jarobi: The showmanship is of the old aesthetic, like us, and people of our generation. And people like Kanye, who give a fuck about their stage showmanship. (.Paak) is brilliant man, dude is fuckin’ ill. And our song (with him) “Movin’ Backwards” came out absolutely phenomenal. And I dunno, I wasn’t like “That verse is ill” when I wrote it. It didn’t impress me that much, I’m being honest with you! (laughing)

But after I got away from it and heard it again, I was like, “Oh wow, I like that shit.” That became one of my favourite joints on the album now.

DM: I chose Anderson .Paak as my show of the year and I saw a lot of incredible stuff in 2016.

Jarobi: Kanye has to be #2, then.

DM: Kanye’s another thing though. Kanye is a spectacle. I’ve been lucky enough to see all his tours…

Jarobi: But the Pablo tour, were you there?

DM: Yeah for sure.

Jarobi: Fuck, you kidding me? That’s gotta be #2 if .Paak is #1!

DM: I hold Kanye to a different measure. That’s like arena spectacle art as opposed to club-bangin’ show.

Jarobi: I hear you.

DM: What did you think of the Pablo record?

Jarobi: There’s some really strong stuff on there. I like it.

DM: And Anderson .Paak, by way, is like all four of you from Tribe at once up there! (laughter) And what about your record, is there a favourite track of yours on there?

Jarobi: It changes all the time. I love “Mobius.” The Busta Rhymes verse — ha! And I love “Conrad Tokyo.” And “Dis Generation.”

DM: For sure “Dis Generation” is a gem. And “Whatever Will Be.” The whole album is beautiful, man. “Black Spasmodic” is my favourite jam that right away jumped out. Before I even caught what it was about. (Author’s note: Q-Tip essentially channels the spirit of Phife Dawg on his verse. No lie.) Granted, you aren’t on it.

Jarobi: Lemme tell you something: Tip destroyed that song. Just destroyed it. Good lord.

DM: So Tip keeps alluding to future plans here and there in the press but it’s all a bit ambiguous for now. Where do you stand on the idea of a tour?

Jarobi: Um, I mean, it’s possible.

DM: Last time we spoke and you remained ambiguous and next thing you know albums were happening. I’ll take a “we’ll see” from you to the bank, personally.

Jarobi: I mean we gotta do one show, or something.

DM: One would hope…one hopes Osheaga 2017, ahem.
(laughter)

DM: I mean we talked about 2016 some and one good thing was, it was a banner year for hip hop. Your close contemporaries and friends De La Soul dropped this summer for the first time in 12 years with The Anonymous Nobody. What did you think?

Jarobi: It’s dope! My favourite joint on there, believe it or not, is the one with 2 Chainz.

DM: Yeah man. That joint “Pain” with Snoop, too — that’s one of my jams of the year.

Jarobi: I love the record man. It’s like, I dunno what people expect from groups like Tribe and De La. We just always gotta be true to ourselves and who we are as people. That said, you can’t expect us to make a record at 45 that we would make at 25. That would be idiotic. Or just try to sound like something new. It doesn’t make sense. But it’s not the ’90s no more. ■

A Tribe Called Quest’s We Got It From Here…Thank U For Your Service is available everywhere. See our b2b feature review of the record here.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-nirenberg/conversation-with-phife-d_b_8904144.html

THE BLOG 

 

1/4/2016  

Updated December 6, 2017

Conversation With Phife Dawg of a Tribe Called Quest

by Michael Nirenberg

The Huffington Post 

The opportunity came up to interview Phife Dawg of the legendary hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest right before the Christmas holidays. For those of you who live under a rock, A Tribe Called Quest are widely considered one of the greatest hip hop groups of all time. Below is an excerpt from my conversation with Phife where we discuss his career, other MC’s, and one of my favorite subjects: the current state of rap.

Enjoy.





MN: Hey Phife. How are you?

PD: What up, man?

MN: So uh, I like the Dear Dilla video 

PD: Thank you.


MN: I was wondering, what was your relationship with him like?

PD: Mmm-wow. He was just a good friend, producer- know what I mean? The whole get together with him was meeting him on tour in I believe was 96. Was it 96? Actually a little earlier than that. 1994- Lollapalooza. We had a show out in Detroit. That’s when I first met him and Q-Tip loved his beats. We all loved his beats. He became part of Q-Tip and Ali’s production team. So he was just amazing with the beats, and he was an even better person, know what I mean? Me and him got real close through the years. That was basically the relationship. It didn’t always have to be about work and music, just hanging out and vibing.

MN: That’s really cool. So why do the video now? I feel as if this song is something of an open letter to him.

PD: Right, that’s exactly it. I took my time with it because so many people were doing different dedications to him and stuff like that, so I just took my time with it. There was also a time when I wasn’t thinking about doing music anymore. I was looking at maybe produce for people more or whatever. So that’s why it took so long.

MN: Was this after Tribe broke up the first time? When you decided you didn’t want to do music anymore?

PD: Right. That was probably like 2002. I figured I wasn’t going to mess with it too much.
MN: I wanted to talk to you about that time because I really liked the solo record. To go back to the video, real quick was that Ali playing the doctor?

PD: (laughs) Yeah it was.

MN: (laughs) Yeah, I caught that on the second time I watched it. I also noticed in the video you make some lighthearted jokes about your diabetes. I like that you’re making fun of it and being playful about it. How does it affect your work these days?

PD: Umm, it doesn’t really affect it. I have been diabetic since I was 19, so I can’t say it affects my work, but when I decided I didn’t really wanna do music anymore I guess it affected it then. You know, I wasn’t really into it. You know what I mean? 

MN: Every interview I’ve read with you, people just ask you a million questions about Tribe Called Quest. I wanted to talk about other things like the solo record you did in 2000. Did you like the process of doing this? Did you prefer being in a group? As far as I know, you only did the one.
PD: I like both. But at the time I wasn’t in the greatest place. You know in this industry timing is everything. Know what I’m saying?

MN: Yeah.

PD: So I do wish I could do it over, but I thought it was a cool album. I just wish the timing was different. Like I said, I like both. I like being in the group because we weren’t just a group, we were friends before that know what I’m saying?

MN: Right.

PD: It wasn’t like it was a group that was put together on a whim, know what I mean?
MN: You can tell that the vibe between you guys even on the tracks. You can tell when something is the real thing. You feel it. It’s more visceral you know?

PD: Right. Doing a group album is a lot of fun because I know them like the back of my hand.
MN: That’s cool. And brothers fight. When people are that close they get into fights. You guys are gonna be together forever even if you’re not in a group.

PD: Right.

MN: I know you are putting out an EP. Why so long between solo joints?

PD: Like I said, I didn’t think I wanted to do music anymore.

MN: For that long?

PD: So I left it alone for the longest. Plus I had my health issues as well.

MN: What brought you back around?

PD: Just a love for beats, a love for lyrics. I just felt it was that time.

MN: Yeah- I guess it has to be something you totally feel. You can’t fake it.

PD: Exactly, yup.

MN: A little about Tribe- where do you stand today? I know it’s always a changing thing. I saw that Ali is in the video so you must be tight with him. You guys getting along?

PD: Yeah, we all good. We’re not working together right now, but we friends.

MN: That’s good to hear. Tell me a little bit about the EP that’s coming out.

PD: It’s basically just really simple man. Hip-hop 101. The way it was, the way it should always be. Its got a lot of bounce to it. It’s just hip-hop. Period. No more, no less.

MN: That’s what I like; I tend to gravitate towards rap that has a lot of rapping in it. I made this joke recently where I said a lot of contemporary rap doesn’t have a lot of rapping in it and I miss it.

PD: Mm-hmm

MN: So that’s cool man. Who is doing the beats with you?

PD: I did some, my DJ did some: Rasta Roots. I got a beat from Crisis. I got a beat from 9th Wonder. Got a beat from Dilla. Who am I missing? I can’t even think right now, know what I mean? So there are some things on there most definitely. Oh! And Knots the Ruler.

MN: Are there plans for a full-length record?

PD: The EP is called “Give Thanks” and the LP is gonna be called “Mutty-morphoses”.

MN: Let’s talk a little bit about hip-hop. Being around as long as you have, where do you think hip-hop is at in this moment? I know there are lots of artists doing a lot of different stuff. 

PD: You know, life is a cycle I believe. It’s going to come back around to what it was. But as far as hip-hop is right now, it’s ok- not the greatest. It’s just ok. I don’t think people honor they craft like Big Daddy Kane, Jay-Z, Eminem, or Ultramagnetics, you know what I’m saying?

MN: Yeah.

PD: Who else? Like Public Enemy, stuff like that KRS, BDP. They don’t really honor they craft like we used to. Everyone made a lane for themselves. No copycat, biting, none of that. Now it’s like the in thing to do because there’s a bunch of laziness going on I think.

MN: I have my own theories about that. I think this sort of started in the late 90’s where the quality started to decline. MC’s started to get lazier- more mush mouthed and I think it had something to do with the rise of southern rap, even though there are excellent MC’s from the south. Generally that’s where I started to lose interest in it and listened to more punk at that time.

PD: Right, right.

MN: What I am noticing now is like a lot of the young kids seem to be bringing the craftsmanship back. 

PD: Right. Def.

MN: With the emergence of the Internet there is room for everybody. More different styles.

PD: Absolutely. True.

MN: So I think there’s hope for the kids you know? I’m going to wait on the sidelines and watch. I know you worked with a lot of different people and many quite legendary. I was wondering if there was anyone you would like to work with?

PD: Right, umm. Ghostface. He’s one of my favorites.

MN: He’s fantastic.

PD: He’s one of my favorite MC’s most definitely.

MN: I like the stuff he did with DOOM, who is another fantastic MC. That’s a good answer. Here’s another good one I wrote. In all these years of observing hip-hop, who do you think is the most underrated MC of all time?

PD: (laughs) That’s a good question. I know I’m one of them most definitely.

MN: You are part of a group that is highly lauded.

PD: Yeah I know, I’m still underrated. I’m the “other guy” in the group. Know what I’m saying?
MN: Yeah, I can see that position.

PD: It’s all good. I think Ghostface is underrated. I think GZA is underrated. I’m not really sure why, because those dudes are phenomenal to me.

MN: They kept growing. Many of the MC’s who are like, in their 40’s kept growing and there seems to be this bullshit idea that it’s a young man’s game. It’s kinda stupid. In any other art form you grow. If you’re a painter, writer... 

PD: Well, the young men aren’t taking care of it!

MN: (laughs) 

PD: Right? They can say it’s a young man’s game all they want. They not taking care of the culture B.

MN: Yeah. Agreed

PD; You know what I’m saying? A lot of half assed shit going on. You know?

MN: Is there anyone you think is carrying the torch right now?

PD: I like Joey Bada$$, J Cole, know what I’m saying?

MN: Especially that first record.

PD: Kendrick, there are others but those three come to mind off top.

MN: That’s cool man, I think that’s all my questions I had. Is there anything else you want to bring up to the readers?

PD: Yeah, like I said Give Thanks is the name of the EP and the single is called Nutshell produced by Dilla. Look out for that in 2016.

My awkward grammar has been edited with love and care by Courtney Eddington.

Follow Michael Nirenberg on 
Twitter: www.twitter.com/MLNirenberg



https://believermag.com/an-interview-with-q-tip/

interviews

 

June 1st, 2004 | Issue fourteen

An Interview with Q-Tip

[MUSICIAN]

“HIPHOP, THE SPIRIT OF WHAT IT WAS, THE SPIRIT THAT MADE IT SO IMPORTANT, THAT MADE IT SO PERTINENT, PRESSING, AND ANY OTHER GOOD ‘P’—THAT SPIRIT HAS DIED AT THE HANDS OF A SWORD-WIELDING BUSINESSMAN.”

Freestyling is like:

Thelonious Monk
Coleman Hawkins
Kenny Clarke

by Toure

Illustration by Charles Burns

An Interview with Q-Tip 

"Q-Tip was born Jonathan Davis and even though he’ll let you call him Q-Tip, most of his closest friends now use his Muslim name, Kamaal Fareed. He began his musical career in the late eighties as a teenager in the now-legendary group A Tribe Called Quest. Back then there was something in hip-hop that you might call innocence, and a group of smart, silly, afrocentric but not aggressively political kids from Queens, New York, charmed their way into hip-hop’s core with cute songs like “Bonita Applebum” and “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo.” Now hip-hop is conglomeratized, a multibillion-dollar business, and Tip has survived the breakup of A Tribe Called Quest and gone through two phases of a solo career, first with slick R&Bized hip-hop like Vivrant Thing and then with a never-released album of singing soul-music style with his funk band. He says he’s returning to straight-ahead hip-hop and will release a solo album this year, but in the music industry nothing is ever written in stone. A Tribe Called Quest is trying to get back together, but no one knows for sure whether that’ll work out, whether the men will be able to come together and make an album as good as the ones they made as boys. This interview was conducted at the Believer event in NYC on December 8, 2003, live onstage in front of a packed house."—Touré

I. WILL THERE EVER BE MORE FROM A TRIBE CALLED QUEST?

THE BELIEVER: So Q-Tip, we’ve heard that A Tribe Called Quest is back together after a few years.What’s the deal?

Q-TIP: Okay, Tribe, let me just talk about it and deal with it and get it all out. The thing with Tribe is that we’ve never really had any… we’ve never really broken up in terms that we won’t speak with this one or this one doesn’t speak to that one. There was always…

BLVR: There was never beef?

QT: No, I mean as a group or band, you’re always going to have little beefs and whatever.
BLVR: It’s just the same as a relationship.

QT: Yeah, you know what I mean, we’ve had little tiffs and arguments and stuff. A couple’ve happened as soon as we got offstage.

BLVR: You’ve had moments where you did a show and as soon as you got offstage you were like… [whispers insults]

QT: We’ve had one moment where it was like that, and De La [Soul] was there and stuff like that, blah blah blah…

BLVR: [Laughs] Okay.

QT: It was interesting, but, anyway, like you know, we never disbanded in that sense, but we obviously went under the whole thing of breakin up and not doin it anymore because of our deal with Jive Records and how we were being treated. We just had a lot of strings… we were all growing in different ways. Phife was in Atlanta. I was in New York.

BLVR: So it was personal? It was the record company?

QT: It was out of the business, out of the records.

BLVR: You were one of the first artists who was really big on dissin the industry. You were the one with the record company rule #4080,“Record company people are shady.” You were always saying that. So to hear you say that “I put away my art because the record company was just killing me”—that’s kind of what you’re saying.

QT: Well, I’m not sayin that I put away my art. Because combined, there was a few things happening. You know, us getting shafted, I guess. And it was just a different time in our lives personally, a time in the industry that was different, I think. Our records never really got the first shot at being what they could be…

BLVR: Because of the label?

QT: Yeah, I think initially, and then towards the end you know it came on us, it fell on us as well.
BLVR: You can’t just blame them.

QT:Yeah, you know, it had to do with us as well. How we dealt with it, you know what I mean. We just decided that it would be better if we just did other things.

BLVR: But where are you guys at now?

QT: Now we were talkin about doin somethin, and we actually recorded this song for Jive. This guy named Chris Lighty runs this label Violator Records. I actually introduced him to Russell Simmons and he started workin for Russell. Because Russ used to manage us, and then Chris came in and started managing us. He started managing Missy [Elliot] and Busta [Rhymes] and…

BLVR: 50 Cent.

QT: 50 Cent and Mobb Deep or whatever. So now he wound up over at Jive, and he’s puttin out another Violator record out.The first Violator record that he did, I did a record, my first solo record, Vivrant Thing, put it on there. So we put this record out on Violator, because he was like, “You know, you need to put out your record for my record [label]. You know, for my thing. It’ll be great—Tribe Called Quest,” you know, sellin the magic beans. “It’ll be great! It’ll be great, man! Tribe Called Quest comes back together and put it on my label!”

BLVR: [Laughs]

QT: It had that kind of vibe to it.And you know, all of our business is not really correct up there yet… and stuff like that—it’s still kind of on ice.We just really have to have a real sit-down. Everybody has to discuss everything ’cuz there’s a lot of baggage.

BLVR: Is the quality of life really better on one record label versus another record label?

QT: No, they’re all the same, but some of them have different things to ’em. I say this all the time: one may have a little more salt, one may have a little bit more pepper, but it’s all the same seasoning. You know?

BLVR: Right, right.

QT: So it’s just a matter of what your palate is used to.

BLVR: Right. But you’re going to have a new album next year.
QT: Who me? Yeah, yeah.

BLVR: April?

QT:Yeah.

BLVR: Stylistically you’ve grown a lot from “Bonita Applebum” to Vivrant Thing. Where is it going to be in terms of the styles that you’ve given us before?

QT:After I did Vivrant Thing, which was like ’98, ’99, I really wanted to put together a band. I love the Roots, I love what they do. Drums are an essential part to hip-hop. It’s an essential part to all music. The first instrument. It’s the communicator. People kinda get sensations and feelings and things like that. So for me with this new stuff, I wanted to have a band, but I wanted the drums to still have those kind of sonic qualities to them. So I kinda worked trying to get the sound together, you know, the certain drum sounds that’re kinda synonymous with hip-hop music—you know, just a real heavy kind of sound. Because sometimes with a band you have one kit and you can be playin it—it can be cool, but it’s just one sound. But we’re spoiled— we’re used to a whole assortment of colors. I wanted it to be where we all sit down as a functioning band, and we all get together and write a tune and rehearse it and hit it and [snaps fingers] to tape we record it, and we go on tour and perform it.

BLVR: Right, right. More the way a rock band goes rather than…

QT: Sorta.A rock band or R&B, yeah, you know what I mean. But I just wanted it to have those hip-hop qualifiers.

II. HOW DOES A RAPPER WRITE?

BLVR: Let’s talk about your creative process. How do you go from a blank page to having a record that we can dance to?

QT: I mean for me, I always start with the music. I don’t know who said it, but someone said that music is the art form that all other art forms are aspiring to be or trying to be. But I try to let the music set the tone and the pace, because it’s just magic. You have these different harmonies, different melodies, and everything is just intertwined and playin together. It just sets a mood. It sets a tone.And I think it’s interesting for you as a writer if you’re gonna pen the tune. To kinda just come in with no hang-ups and just let the music dictate to you what you’re gonna be or what you’re gonna speak about.

BLVR: Because hip-hop guys used to carry notebooks and write their rhymes and then when they found a beat that would go with that they would…

QT: Yeah, I’ve never been that. I started out like that, but then I became really good at freestylin. It was just like off the top of my head or whatever, so I never really started out writin. It’s always been a relationship with the music where I let the music—I just succumb to it the only way… it’s kinda like I just wait for it. ’Cuz that way it’s different every time that you come to it.

BLVR: Rappers can’t really freestyle nowadays, can they? Like you had to when you came up, and not anymore.

QT:Well, I don’t know. I’ve been keepin my eye on a couple of cats and it seems like it’s still getting around. To me, freestylin is important because it’s sorta like if you went into Minton’s circa 1947—y’all know of Minton’s, the jazz house or whatever—and Thelonious Monk is playin somethin and they all just jammin and he’s just playin somthin because there’s Coleman Hawkins playin and Kenny Clarke playin, and they’re playin in a certain way, so he’s just ad-libbin and stuff like that. I liken that to freestyle; it’s the same thing.

BLVR: Now, you came into hip-hop in like ’89, ’90, as a professional.

QT:Yeah, ’89, ’88.

BLVR: And it’s changed tremendously. It was like an underground community almost, and now it’s just a conglomerate sorta thing.What’re your impressions on how this little thing you entered has grown into this monster? People say hip-hop is dead. How do you feel?

QT: Yeah, it’s been co-opted. It’s interesting because hip-hop, the spirit of what it was, the spirit that made it so important, that made it so pertinent, pressing, and any other good “p”—that spirit has died at the hands of a sword-wielding businessman.

BLVR: Yes, yes.

QT: Sliced it up and given the rations out to certain other businesspeople. And they’ve all been eatin it up and spewin it out to the land, and we’ve been kinda like accepting it, you know what I mean? But it’s good ’cuz where you have that, you always have an underground. And where you have that, you always have somebody right now, somewhere changin it. So I think it’s an interesting, exciting time. I feel like the appetite for music is huge, and I feel like there’s just a lot of possibility and I’m really excited about the fact that that spirit has died and now we’re left with the challenge to… it’s hard.

BLVR: You have hope.You have hope!

QT: I do have hope, dammit! I’m an optimist. You know, I’m not one of them pessimistic bastards.
BLVR: Crunk makes me very pessimistic.

QT: Oh, well, there’s certain things that make you say there’s a lot of bullshit.“Isn’t there a lot of bullshit.” I can say “bullshit”? You know what’s a funny thing, as a side note? I was watchin South Park. They had this episode with a guy—I guess apparently you can say “shit” on TV.

BLVR: [Laughs] Yeah, I saw that one where they say it like a hundred times.

QT: It was like “shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.” So I mean, as a rapper, I dig that.

BLVR: [Laughs] So we’re talking about the Golden Era of hip-hop. A lot of people talk about The Scenario, one of the greatest hip-hop records ever, which was you and Phife, and Charlie Brown and Busta Rhymes from Leaders of the New School, and the energy on the record is so incredible. It’s like geez—the night y’all had in the studio making that must’ve been incredible. Like does anyone remember that record, am I alone? [Big applause from audience]

QT:Yeah, thanks, it was definitely somethin.The funny story about that was we came from a club or somewhere and went right to the studio. It must’ve been like two in the morning and I did the track and it was up and it was playin. And everybody was off like writin. Ike came up with the hook, and he would go, “The scenario… blah blah blah.” So, you know, it was a very testosterone-filled room.

BLVR: Right, all men.

QT: All men, all young boyed-out. So it was cool because everybody was writin they rhymes. And Busta, if you don’t know him, he’s like 6’1″ from Brooklyn, got dreds, and he’s very, what’s the word, grand.

BLVR:Yeah, and then like,“Rarrr! Raarrr! Like a dungeon dragon!”

QT: So it’s three in the morning, and we’re all writin, and he’s walkin around, checkin everybody’s rhymes out. He’s like [in Busta’s voice], “Yo wow, what’s that, whatchu got?” So he’s kickin his rhyme, “I’m the… [mumbles fast].”And he’s like [in Busta’s voice],“Yo Phife, whatchu got?” [mumbles fast]

BLVR: You already have the beat.The beat’s playing.

QT: The beat’s up. And then suddenly, I forget who it was, but somebody was sayin, “What you got?” And [Busta] was like [in Busta’s voice] “Naw, funk that.”

BLVR: [Laughs]

QT: So, everybody rhymes and then he goes in last. So when he goes in, because nobody’s heard his, and everybody’s heard everybody else’s from the corner of the ear—so then he goes in and he does his and we’re all like: no wonder. But it was just good, man.

BLVR: There was no catching up to him after that.

III. HAVE YOU MET MOMMA-TIP?

BLVR: Now, you have a close relationship with your dad, which is different. Most rappers don’t know their dads and a lot of that comes through, that sort of anger towards men and towards their self.

QT: Instead of sayin most rappers don’t know their dads…

BLVR: What,“most emcees”?

QT: No, not even that. But when you grow up in the hood, for lack of a better term, your pops is like a fringe benefit. I was born in the seventies, so I had an uncle who died in Vietnam; I had an uncle who got strung out on heroin or whatever. I have a really big family and a lot of my cousins never really got to know their dad. Their dad was out doin somethin else, you know, so there was all these different situations. I’m sayin in terms of inner-city kids and their dads just not being present. But me, I was lucky that I had my father there and honored his values.

BLVR: But that makes a difference in your music, even.

QT: Yeah, it does. It makes a difference in your life, too. For me, though, it’s wild because my father would be teachin me stuff without tellin me. He would leave a Reader’s Digest on the bed, like I’d be four.

BLVR: [Laughs]

QT: This is true. I would pick it up, and he would walk by, and he would keep doin his thing.You know, I miss that. He passed when I was sixteen. So he never really got a chance to see me do this. It’s tough.

BLVR: But you’re very close with your mom.And you do a killer impression of your mom.

QT: Yeah I do.

BLVR: ’Cuz with you as an actor, rapper, producer, etcetera, your mom’s got to be the proudest mom in all of Queens.

QT: Well, maybe some of y’all could’ve met my mother, if you live in New York, ’cuz my mother is the type of mom, she’ll just be walkin down Sixth Avenue and she could see you and she be like [in his mother’s sugary voice], “Baby, what time is it? What? OK… What’s your name?”

BLVR: [Laughs]

QT: “You like hip-hop, you like rap music? You ever hear of A Tribe Called Quest?” And she be like, “That’s my boy, that’s my boy Q-Tip.”

BLVR: And what does she call herself?

QT: [Continuing in mother’s voice] “I call myself Momma Tip”

BLVR: [Laughs]

QT: So, if you’re around in New York City, and you see this black lady who’s like 5’4″, and she’s like sixty years old, and she has this big smile, and she comes up to you and asks if you like hip-hop, don’t be alarmed. It’s my mother. She’ll probably take you back home and make you some cold-and-flu formula or somethin. That’s my mother.

BLVR: [Laughs]

IV. HEY, AIN’T YOU MOS DEF?

BLVR: I want to talk about the sound of your voice.

QT: What about it?

BLVR: I mean it’s the main thing that has always just drawn us in to you as listeners. But I wonder when you first were a kid, when was the first time someone said, “Your voice sounds different than everybody else’s.”

QT: Well, I guess it happened really in high school. Because when you’re little everybody’s voice sounds little.

BLVR: Right.

QT: But mine I guess got stuck somewhere. So I’m getting to high school, and Africa from the Jungle Brothers, you know, we started out together. He said I sounded like a baby or whatever and he’s the one who actually started callin me Q-Tip. I don’t know what—Qtips and babies, I guess.

BLVR: Something good that goes in your ear and feels nice.

QT: I don’t know, I guess it’s very soft. I guess my voice sounds… I don’t know, I’m tryin to explain his madness.

BLVR: But you’re not crazy about the sound.

QT: No, I’ve always been…

BLVR: I can’t believe that.

QT:Yeah, man, I feel a way about it because it sounds so… Picture this: you’re hungry and you want to get away from home, people don’t know you, and you want to get a good pizza. So you call up Information.

BLVR: I can see where this is going.

QT: [Laughs] No, no, you call up information—this is serious—and then you’re like,“Can I have the number for Domino’s?” [Information operator voice] “Which town, ma’am?”

BLVR: [Laughs] And how often do the 411 people be like,“Is this Q-Tip?”

QT: Yeah, that happens.That’s funny because I get people who know who I am, and then people will call me either Ice-T or Ice Cube. ’Cuz Q-Tip, and Ice-T, and Ice Cube…

BLVR: All those rapper names.

QT: Well, ice tea, these are all things you’ll find in the house; Q-Tip, you know what I mean? So people will mix it up. But as of late I’ve been getting a lot of Mos Def. “Ain’t you Mos Def?”

BLVR: Really, that’s got to be a little like, damn, I practically spawned him, like aesthetically speaking.

QT: I mean, shit, it’s cool I guess, I’ll take it.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER:

Touré is an American writer, music journalist, cultural critic, and television personality. He was a co-host of the TV show The Cycle on MSNBC.

https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2011/07/26/138584427/a-tribe-called-quest-the-rise-and-fall-of-hip-hops-beatles

Music News From NPR

The Record

A Tribe Called Quest: The Rise And Fall Of A Legend

5:14

• Download

• Transcript

July 21, 2011

Heard on All Things Considered

by Frannie Kelley 

 

A Tribe Called Quest in the early days. From left to right, Jarobi White, Q-Tip, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Phife Dawg.  Ernie Paniccioli/Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics 

Turning a handful of people into one really good, productive band is so complicated it's almost a miracle when it happens. For a group of musicians to cohere, almost everything needs to balance out: ego, work ethic, knowledge, health, experience.

Pioneering hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest hit that balance in a spectacular way. In the span of four years, starting in 1990, the group released three albums widely acknowledged by hip-hop fans to be among the best ever: People's Instinctive Travels and The Paths of Rhythm, The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders.

A new documentary, called Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest tries to tell the musicians' story. But, like the group itself, the film is complicated.
Filmmaker Michael Rapaport — the same Michael Rapaport who acted in True Romance and appeared on Chappelle's Show — is a hardcore Tribe fan.

"When they broke up in 1998," he says, "their last album The Love Movement — I was unsatisfied with that and I just didn't understand why they were breaking up. They meant so much, emotionally, to the fans that I wanted to know why. That was really my reasoning for the film: Can they make more music? Will they make more music? Why did it end?"

Those are burning questions for all of the group's fans. Tribe's DJ, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, has one possible answer.

"You become obligated to the fans," he says, talking about what happened to the group as they became more successful and known. "You become obligated to the promotion aspect, to having to keep the art in the minds of the people. Whereas before that it's just a matter of dreaming, creating, exploring and taking great pleasure."

When A Tribe Called Quest was first getting started, straight out of high school, it was the '80s, and hip-hop was young. Original group member Jarobi White says he was having more fun than anybody else, and his crew was firing on all cylinders.

"Being so young, I mean 19, 18, that's young," he says. "We had no idea. Everything was just flying by the seat of your pants. How it felt. How it felt was the only thing that matters. Am I enjoying it? Do I feel good about it? Yes? That's what we're doing. The money and the fame and all of that stuff, that was all secondary."

The two predominant vocalists in the group were Phife Dawg and Q-Tip. "Me and Q-Tip were best friends from like 2 to 15," Phife says. "Me and Jarobi became best friends from like 12 until now. Ali Shaheed went to the same high school as Q-Tip. That's how they met."

"We were just trying to be fly," Jarobi says. "And make music. And be musicians. Be like Stevie and Marvin and Prince. Thelonious Monk and Mingus and Charlie Parker. We were trying to be those people."


A Tribe Called Quest were part of a bigger community of people in New York making music that they believed was important: groups like the Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, Queen Latifah, Consequence, Leaders of the New School, Monie Love and more. They all made music together, shared studio time and traded ideas. They competed and pushed each other to be better. They often thanked and name-checked each other on record.

"Creating music and specifically hip-hop," says Ali, "when it was still so new — I think the time period we lived in added to the greatness of the sound. As far as lyrical topics, subjects, they were more heartfelt."

A Tribe Called Quest burned hot and bright. They worked collaboratively much of the time, sampling the jazz records their fathers loved instead of relying on the funk and James Brown samples rampant in hip-hop at the time. They had a huge impact on their peers and on a younger generation.
And then it all fell apart.

As Rapaport points out, "The Beatles broke up. Led Zeppelin broke up. Jimi Hendrix even broke up his group and formed another group. Public Enemy broke up. It happens."

In the story Rapaport tells in his film, Tribe broke up because Q-Tip and Phife vied for control and credit. But the story the band tells is different. While they were in the studio, they say, their world was changing.

"The largest difference between the hip-hop game now and back then is that people make songs," Jarobi says. "They don't do projects anymore. We did projects. Notice I didn't even say album, we did projects."

"I just know about my group and why we came together," Phife says. But he's not surprised there aren't as many hip-hop groups working today. "The way I see it, as of right now, you don't see a lot of that because you have to split that money three, four ways."

Phife, Jarobi and the other two members of Tribe agreed to make the movie because they wanted their work to be documented, and because their peers pushed them to do it. Nas, one of the most celebrated MCs in hip-hop, told Ali Shaheed that Tribe is hip-hop's version of The Beatles.

Perhaps there was another reason. By the time Rapaport came calling, Phife was sick from diabetes. Eventually, he needed a kidney, which his wife donated.The sequences on screen aren't all pretty, but making the movie helped at least some members talk about the good times and the bad."I guess I needed therapy for going through what I went through, or at least while I was going through it," Phife says. "I usually don't talk about it with anyone — I'm pretty much discreet. And when I started talking to [Rapaport] about it, it felt like that's really what it was — therapy. I just really put it out there, knowing that he was gonna show the world. I was like, 'You got the beats, you got the rhymes. This is life right here.'"As for all of Rapaport's burning questions — the whys and the what-ifs? — the answers are in the music.

• A Tribe Called Quest

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Interview: In Appreciation of Phife Dawg, Member of ‘A Tribe Called Quest’

Submitted by PatrickMcD [1] on March 27, 2016 - 6:14pm
 

• A Tribe Called Quest [2]
• Ali Shaheed Muhammad [3]
• Beats Rhymes and Life [4]
• Five Foot Assassin [5]
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• The Low End Theory [13]

CHICAGO – It was announced last week on March 22nd, 2016, that a hip-hop pioneer, Phife Dawg of the group “A Tribe Called Quest,” passed away at the age of 45. It was Phife, along with Q-Tip, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Jarobi White, that created a new voice in the evolution from rap to hip hop.

In 2011, a documentary regarding the group, “Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest’ was released, and Phife Dawg was on the promotional tour for the film. In appreciation of his life and music contributions, HollywoodChicago.com reprints the interview from that tour.



Phife Dawg (left) Performs in A Tribe Called Quest
Photo credit: Sony Pictures Classics
HollywoodChicago.com: Phife, you talk about your childhood with Q-Tip growing up in Queens. What was that time and place like and how did it influence and inspire your eventual hip-hop career?

Phife Dawg: New York City pretty much reeked of music. Reeked of rap and hip-hop. As for me, growing up in a strict West Indian, Trinidadian household, and a Christian household as well, I had to fight for the right to go and actually be a part of it. In the process of all that, Q-Tip was my best friend as a kid, so whatever I did – and vice versa – we asked each other to be a part of it. 

When it came to hip-hop, he was like, ‘yo kid, I want some MC sh*t, and I think you should be a part of it.’ One thing led to the next thing, he went to the same high school as the Jungle Brothers, and people in that nature, it was about being in the right place at the right time. There were only two things you did in New York City, Queens to be exact, music or sports. 

HollywoodChicago.com: Your music was very influential on hip-hop as we know it today, like how The Beatles changed rock music. What was it about the chemistry and relationships in the group that simply wanted to push all the limits of what everybody thought was rap and hip-hop back then?

Phife: For me, it was just a matter of being professional, precise and not wanting to look like an idiot in front of 15,000 people. [laughs] That was my main thing, you never wanted to look crazy or dumb. If it takes 30 days of rehearsal, you better ace all 30 of those days. When it’s game time, you’re ready to play ball.

HollywoodChicago.com: Was that the philosophy of everybody in the early days?

Phife: Not everybody, just me. I didn’t want to look dumb on stage, and I didn’t want to disappoint my band mates, just like Michael Jordan didn’t want to disappoint Horace, B.J. and Scotty. They are counting on me, I’m eating off of this and so are they. I don’t want to take food off of somebody’s plate because I went ‘5 for 40 at the foul line.’ I’m going to concentrate and make it happen.

HollywoodChicago.com: Around the time of the ‘Beats Rhymes & Life’ album and ‘Midnight Marauders,’ you were quoted as saying you didn’t feel like you fit in the group anymore, mentioning Q-tips and Ali’s conversion to Islam. How did that religious conversion both change the dynamic of the group and influence the records themselves?

Phife: I hate to even go back on that. It was the worse time of my career. I was really lost, should I still be a member of A Tribe Called Quest, do I even want to be a member of the group? Because I felt like the odd man out. I would never disrespect a man’s way of life, especially if they’re happy.
I just felt like because I supported and was loyal to the group, and them being Muslim – because Ali Shaheed was born and raised Muslim, then Q-Tip converted years later – it seemed like it was a field day for the media and reporters against Phife. I remember one article for a publication in London, the segue was ‘Q-Tip and Ali Have Seen the Light, is it too late for Phife?’ Sh*t like that.



Phife Dawg Passed Away on March 22nd, 2016
Photo credit: Sony Pictures Classics
HollywoodChicago.com: Did you consider converting?

Phife: Me personally, I’m not going to change overnight, nor did I want to. Call it stubborn, call it ignorant, call it what you want, but I don’t think I have to join a particular faith or culture or creed or religion just to fit in, since I was part of the clique since it’s inception. It was just unfair that they were happy, but I’m getting sh*tted on because I didn’t join that particular fray. It’s no disrespect on the Islamic faith, I wasn’t ready to join. I never complained, I just sat back and watched it unfold. Unfortunately it backfired on me the most, that’s why I said that in the article. 

HollywoodChicago.com: As chronicled in the documentary, you got the gift of life from your wife in your recent kidney transplant. Did you make any promises to yourself after you recovered, as far as what direction you wanted you life to go from here?

Phife: Yeah, one of my main goals is to become a sports broadcaster. That is the ultimate for me. I have my own label, and I want to record artists, but that’s as far as I want to go with a label. Like Berry Gordy, behind the scenes. But when I returned to New York City, I caught the music bug again, and I haven’t stopped writing since. I’m almost done with my E.P., entitled ‘Songs in the Key of Phife, Volume One.’ The LP will follow. So I am totally involved with music, but my goal is to do the sports thing. 

HollywoodChicago.com: Since you are a super knowledgeable sports fan, which team, it could be any sport, reminds you most about A Tribe Called Quest, and why?

Phife: The 2000-2001 Los Angeles Lakers. Because it was Kobe and Shaq, and they didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but they still worked it out to win three championships. Ali, for example, was our Phil Jackson. That is what it boils down to. I’m the point guard, and the big man, Q-Tip, is not going to get the ball until I get to the party. That is how I relate it. That’s Phife Dawg, bomb!
  
Malik Boyce Taylor – Phife Dawg – 1970-2016

by PATRICK McDONALD [15] Writer, Editorial Coordinator HollywoodChicago.com pat@hollywoodchicago.com [14]

© 2016 Patrick McDonald, HollywoodChicago.com

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March 23, 2016 

A Tribe Called Quest: 20 Essential Songs

R.I.P. Phife Dawg: Revisit pioneering New York rap crew’s best tracks

By  Christopher R. Weingarten  

&

Jon Dolan

&

Mosi Reeves

&

Jason Newman

&

Keith Harris

A Tribe Called Quest (L-R): Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Jarobi White.  Karl Grant/Photoshot

Through 10 years and a handful of critically adored albums, rappers A Tribe Called Quest went from spitting fly routines on Linden Boulevard in Queens to mapping out the electrically relaxed blueprint for wave after wave of abstract alterna-rap bohemians — laying the footprints for Digable Planets, the Fugees, Mos Def and Talib Kweli, the Black Eyed Peas, Lupe Fiasco and even superfan Kanye West. Together, Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Jarobi and Ali Shaheed Muhammad cemented the link between jazz’s grooves and hip-hop’s future funk, provided a show-stealing scenario to launch their friend Busta Rhymes to fame and incubated a young producer named Jay Dee who would influence a generation of beatmakers on his own. A freewheeling trip of Lou Reed licks, tales of lost wallets, giddy scratching, Ron Carter bass assists and salty punchlines, their body of work was like nothing hip-hop had seen before, or has since. In remembrance of Phife Dawg, who passed away Tuesday at age 45, here are the pioneering rap group’s 20 essential tracks.

“Excursions” (1991) 

The opening track of the jazz-flecked The Low End Theory was one of hip-hop's great statements of purpose, with the crew connecting musical dots between different eras of radical music. Q-Tip took a 6/8 hard-bop lick from Jazz Messengers bassist Mickey Bass and flipped it until it bounced along in hip-hop's funky 4/4. Tribe sample O.G. hip-hop pioneers the Last Poets "("time is running and passing, passing and running") the same way that avowed Tribe fan Kanye West would use Gil-Scott Heron at the end of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. In Q-Tip's lyrics, rap is like the bebop that Q-Tip's dad listened to, Bobby Brown is amping like Michael, and the abstract poet is prominent like Shakespeare or Langston Hughes.

"There were a couple of other groups that were sampling jazz at that time," Ali Shaheed Muhammad told Nextbop.com. "Gang Starr, Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth, Main Source … but I think the way that we delivered it was in such a way that had not really been done." As Q-Tip told Brian Coleman in Check the Technique: "At the time, there were some things happening in hip-hop, sonically, that I wanted to expand on, especially with the bottom. … I would always explain how dynamic I wanted things to be by telling Bob [Power, engineer], 'I want this to be more at the bottom, at the low end.' I guess it was a lack of articulation but it got the job done. And that's where the title came from."

“Check the Rhime” (1991) 

 

On the first single from ATCQ's seminal The Low End Theory, Q-Tip and Phife Dawg reminisce about their pre-fame days as teenagers spitting in ciphers on Linden Boulevard in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens. A slightly accelerated looped rhythm from Minnie Riperton's "Baby, This Love I Have" sets a casual, laid-back mood, with Phife spitting verses as if he were lounging in the afternoon sun, swatting away rivals like flies. "A special shout of peace goes out to all my pals, you see/And a middle finger goes to all you punk MCs," he raps. It's also an assertion of Phife's primacy as a rapper. Some doubted his talent after his halting verses on People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, but here, he quickly proves himself Q-Tip's lyrical equal.

“Jazz (We’ve Got)” (1991) 

 

The lovely cool-out vibes of "Jazz (We Got)" stem from a tantalizing collaboration between ATCQ and Pete Rock that never came to fruition. One of the potential backing tracks was a Pete Rock arrangement of Jimmy McGriff's "Green Dolphin Street." "Pete had come up with that beat, but the song we were going to do never materialized," Q-Tip told Brian Coleman for the latter's 2005 book Rakim Told Me. "I already had the record he used, but I wanted to get his permission. He was like: ‘Yeah, go ahead.'" Pete Rock isn't mentioned as a co-producer in the Low End Theory credits, but Q-Tip gives him a shout-out at the end of "Jazz." Meanwhile, a lyrical stray shot from Phife Dawg — "Strictly hardcore tracks, not a New Jack Swing" — raised the ire of Teddy Riley protégés Wreckx-n-Effect, best known at the time for the lame pop-rap hit "New Jack Swing" (and, later, the even worse "Rump Shaker"). Wreckx-n-Effect exacted revenge for Phife's diss by surrounding Q-Tip at a 1993 Naughty by Nature concert and punching him in the eye. The Zulu Nation and the Nation of Islam subsequently negotiated a truce between the two.

 

“Buggin’ Out” (1991)

Those familiar with the video for "Jazz (We Got)" — see above —  will recall that the song abruptly ends at the 3:30 mark. Phife Dawg then says, "Yo, check this out," and the black-and-white A-side shifts into the primary colored B-side, "Buggin' Out." "Microphone check, one-two, what is this?" rhymes the five-foot assassin with the ruffneck business over a live-and-direct Ron Carter bass line. Phife's second "Buggin' Out" verse is even better as he reveals how being in overcrowded New York can get overwhelming "like a migraine pounding," despairs about riding on the train "with no dough" and admits that sometimes he just wants to be alone. "I had a twin brother that died at birth so I was a lonely child sometimes, but that loneliness helped me out a lot," Phife told The Source in 1993. "I'd be in the bathroom showering when I was mad young, and the rhymes would just be coming."

“Scenario” feat. Leaders of the New School (1992) 

This was the song that kickstarted a brief yet glorious era of rah-rah fast rap: Tribe and Leaders of the New School chanting "so what's so what's so what's the scenario" at the top of their lungs, and then blasting us with one killer verse after another. Phife Dawg was the leadoff batter who sparked the session, and his line "bust a nut inside your eye/To show you where I come from" was so visceral that cable networks eventually censored it from broadcasts of the ensemble's classic video. "My days of paying dues are over/Acknowledge me as in there," he rhymes. Ya goddamn right he's in there.

“Scenario (7 M.C.’s Remix)” feat. Kid Hood, Leaders of the New School (1992) 

For the B-side of their iconic single, A Tribe Called Quest refitted "Scenario" with a new beat, new lyrics and the same all-star cast. One addition was the debut recording of roughneck MC Kid Hood, whose "pump slugs in your face and dump that ass in the river" style stood in stark contrast to the electrically relaxed Tribe and the cheeky Leaders, but whose gift for rhymes was unquestionable. Days after recording the track, he was shot and killed in Harlem, leaving the "Scenario" remix the lone recorded appearance of this promising MC. "When I first met him, he was rhymin'" Q-Tip told The Source. "He didn't say hello or nothin', he just started rhymin'. … He really seemed like he was sold on coming out and working hard. The day we taped, he went in the studio, took his shirt off, and went in the booth. He did it in one take." Though Kid Hood wouldn't live to make another song, his voice would live on: His "I'm a bad, bad man" quip was sampled extensively on Notorious B.I.G.'s Ready to Die.

 

 “Hot Sex” (1992) 

As hard as Tribe comes. The first track after The Low End Theory (surfacing originally on the Boomerang soundtrack) ditched bassy semi-acoustic jazz-funk for slamming, stripped down electronics, with a beat that's as nasty as the title suggests, built off a looped sample of Lou Donaldson's "Who's Making Love." Phife and Tip step to suckers with all the nasty swagger they can summon: "I'm not Lawn Doctor so just step off with the ho," Phife spits, while Tip boasts that "the poems that I create are for hookers and the crooks," donning a creepy mask in the video to hide the shiner that Wreckx-n-Effect had just given him for seeming to diss New Jack Swing on "Jazz (We've Got)."

 

“Award Tour” (1993) 

 

The first single on Midnight Marauders is pure celebration, finding Tribe and their buddy Trugoy from De La Soul in a glorious Native Tongues victory lap, from Brooklyn and Queens to London, Tokyo and beyond. Phife Dawg just about bursts out of the speakers — "[sliding] in the place/Buddy, buddy, buddy, all up in your face" — sounding live and lovable even when he's telling the listener to call him “Dyna-Mutt.” "Award Tour" is a high point in the career of a man with a track record longer than a DC-20 aircraft. 

 

“Sucka Nigga” (1993) 

 

With one verse and one chorus, Q-Tip offers one of rap’s deeper looks at the most controversial and volatile word in the English language. “The suckas are those who front. Niggas who be trying to rhyme all hard. I lived that shit, man. That’s something I vowed never to rhyme about,” he told Vibe. “We’ve taken a word that the white man put on us in a derogatory sense and put love in it. But yet — and still — he can’t use it. I know it stems from a bad background, but I’m just representing the street. All the kids in the street know where that shit comes from.”

 

“Electric Relaxation” (1994) 

 

One of A Tribe Called Quest's best-loved songs perfectly encapsulates Q-Tip and Phife Dawg's comparable strengths as MCs. Q-Tip is the street poet funky enough to drop lines like "I wanna pound the poontang until it stinks," yet he also sensitively notes the anguish of unrequited sexual attraction ("I couldn't drop dimes ‘cause you couldn't relate"). Phife Dawg is the corner dude whose command of urban pop ephemera like BBD's failed 1993 single "Above the Rim" and BET Video LP host Madelyne Woods is only matched by his raunchy punch lines ("Let me save the little man from inside the boat"). Underlining their back-and-forth flows is an inimitably slowed-down loop of Ronnie Foster's "Mystic Brew" and a mumbled Q-Tip chorus that, in the pre-Internet days, had heads struggling to figure out what he says: "Relax yourself, girl … what?"

 

“Oh My God” feat. Busta Rhymes (1994) 

 

A bass line reconfigured from Lee Morgan's "Absolutions" darts underneath a busily horn-stuffed track constructed from Kool & the Gang's "Who's Gonna Take the Weight?" and Busta busts out the title on the chorus like he can't believe he's had to wait so long. But the MCs hold center stage. Tip sums himself up in six words – "I'm a black intellect but unrefined" – and Phife flirts memorably with Dawn Robinson if she happens to be listening. It's not easy to listen to Phife boast "When's the last time you heard a funky diabetic?" now that the disease has taken his life. But that line also sounds fiercer and more defiant than ever.

 

“1nce Again” (1996) 

 

Q-Tip was one of the earliest champions of J Dilla's muted, punchy, sample-distending production. He became enamored with it shortly after P-Funk keyboardist Amp Fiddler introduced him to the producer at a '94 Michigan Lollapalooza tour stop. Tip invited the young beat constructer, then known professionally as Jay Dee, to join the Ummah production squad. The first single from ATCQ's fourth album, "1nce Again," is one of the first major tastes of his sound: rap as a woozy, chopped funhouse mirror. Smarter critics got it, but pulling a dark, moody There's a Riot Goin' On move after the giddy smash of "Award Tour" felt anticlimactic; having R&B singer Tammy Lucas handle the hook was anathema to true-school heads; and ATCQ documentary director Michael Rapaport even calls the track "the beginning of the end." Still, there was very little out there like this at the time, and "1nce Again" predicted some of the most critically adored beatmaking of the next decade.

 

“Stressed Out” feat. Faith Evans (1996) 

 

The highlight of the “Baby Phife Version” of ATCQ’s moody and downbeat “Stressed Out” is Phife Dawg’s closing verse. (The album version of “Stressed Out” doesn’t include Phife, and instead focuses on Q-Tip trading mics with his cousin, newcomer Consequence. Consequence’s outsized presence on ATCQ’s 1996 album didn’t sit well with Phife, and tension lingered between the two during recording sessions.) Phife often plays the ruffneck counterpart to Q-Tip’s wise-beyond-his-years sage, but here he sounds like the mature one. He kicks a ragamuffin flow, noting how he takes medication for diabetes, and praises his loving wife, Deisha Taylor, and how “she cures me from stress.” His brief words about his marriage — “Lay my head on her breast/Sugar dumpling knows best” — are among the most positive you’ll hear about monogamous relationships in the hip-hop canon. Years later, Deisha was a kidney donor for her husband in 2008, and their relationship was chronicled in the documentary Beats, Rhymes and Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest.    

“Find a Way” (1998) 

 

 "We pretty much knew before the recording of The Love Movement that this was it. You better get your wind up 'cause this is the last dance," said Phife Dawg of the band's maligned fifth and final album. "It's weird to me that it would be called The Love Movement because we really were not loving that album, we were not loving putting out that album, we didn't even love each other at that time, so to speak. It should have been called The Last Movement." Still, the group managed one last great single before calling it quits. Over a Dilla-fried Ummah production, the group explored the complications that occur when you leave the friend zone.
 

A Tribe Called Quest - "Jazz (We've Got)" + "Buggin' Out" on same video shoot: 

All,

I always thought that Q-Tip and Phife Dawg were two of the very small handful of truly GREAT AND ORIGINAL MCs in the storied history of the medium. In fact from the very first time I heard Tribe LIVE in an extraordinary mindbending performance in NYC in 1992 after listening like a delirious fanatic to their first three albums it was immediately clear to me that the group was absolutely possessed by an authentically mesmerizing GENIUS in every possible sense of the word. 'The Low End Theory' (1991) and 'Midnight Marauders' (1993) are easily and undoubtedly two of the top 10 hiphop recordings ever made and the amazing PHIFE DOG was at the very epicenter of the elegant and electrifying mastery of language, musical and pure aesthetic style that characterized Tribe at their very best. It's impossible for me to put my head around the idea that PHIFE is no longer with us at the tragically early age of 45. I can't believe it so for the time being I simply REFUSE to. All I been doing since the brother passed on nearly a week ago is listening like a demon to everything Phife, Q-Tip, Shaheed Muhammad and entire extended Jungle crew recorded during the truly inspiring Old School 1990s when all that really mattered to the truly serious artists in the hiphop game was the ART itself and NOTHING else...

THANK YOU PHIFE DAWG for helping me and millions of others throughout the world survive and get thru the past 25 years What else can I possibly say of any meaning at all at this point aside from WE...LOVE...YOU. BROTHER and RIP. Fortunately we will never "miss you" because of the magnificent legacy in sound and images that you have heroically left us. Peace...

Kofi

LYRICS:

"Jazz (We Got the...)"

[Intro/Chorus]:

We got the jazz [X4]

[Verse One: Q-Tip]:

Stern firm and young with a laid-back tongue

The aim is to succeed and achieve at 21

Just like Ringling Brothers, I'll daze and astound

Captivate the mass, cause the prose is profound

Do it for the strong, we do it for the meek

Boom it in your boom it in your boom it in your Jeep

Or your Honda or your Beemer or your Legend or your Benz

The rave of the town to your foes and your friends

So push it, along, trails, we blaze

Don't deserve the gong, don't deserve the praise

The tranquility will make ya unball your fist

For we put hip-hop on a brand new twist

A brand new twist with the homie-alistic

So low-key that ya probably missed it

And yet it's so loud that it stands in the crowd

When the guy takes the beat, they bowed

So raise up squire, address your attire

We have no time to wallow in the mire

If you're on a foreign path, then let me do the lead

Join in the essence of the cool-out breed

Then cool out to the music cuz it makes ya feel serene

Like the birds and the bees and all those groovy things

Like getting stomach aches when ya gotta go to work

Or staring into space when you're feeling berserk

I don't really mind if it's over your head

Cuz the job of resurrectors is to wake up the dead

So pay attention, it's not hard to decipher

And after the horns, you can check out the Phifer

[Chorus]

[Verse Two: Phife Dawg]:

Competition, dem Phifer come sideway

But competition, dey mus' me come straightway

Competition, dem Phifer come sideway

But competition, dey mus' come straightway

Hows about that, it seems like it's my turn again

All through the years my mike has been my best friend

I know some brothers wonder, can Phifer really kick it?

Some even wanna dis me, but why sweat it?

I'm all into my music cuz it's how I make papes

Tryin' to make hits, like Kid Capri makes tapes

Me sweat another? I do my own thing

Strictly hardcore tracks, not a new jack swing

I grew up as a Christian so to Jah I give thanks

Collect my banks, listen to Shabba Ranks

I sing, and chat, I do all of that

It's 1991 and I refuse to come wack

I take off my hat to other crews that intend to rock

But the Low End Theory's here, it's time to wreck shop

I got Tip and Shah, so whom shall I fear

Stop look and listen, but please don't stare

So jet to the store, and buy the LP

On Jive/RCA, cassettes and CD's

Produced and arranged by the four-man crew

And oh shit, Skiff Anselm, he gets props too

Make sure you have a system with some phat house speakers

So the new shit can rock, from Mars to Massapequa

Cuz where I come from quality is job one

And everybody up on Linden know we get the job done

So peace to that crew, and peace to this crew

Bring on the tour, we'll see you at a theatre nearest you

[Verse Three: Q-Tip]

Hey yo but wait, back it up, hup, easy back it up

Please let the Abstract embellish on the cut

Back and forth just like a Cameo song

If you dig this joint then please come dance along

To the music cuz it's done just for the rhyme

Now I gotta scat and get mine, underline

The jazz, the what? The jazz can move that ass

Cuz the Tribe originates that feelin' of pizzazz

It's the universal sound, best to brothers underground

In the one-six below, ya didn't have to go

Some say that I'm a sinner cuz I once had an orgy

And sometimes for breakfast I eat grits and porgies

If this is a stinker, then call me a stink, I ask

"What? What? What?" - now check it out

All my peoples in Queens ya don't stop

Now all my peoples in Brooklyn ya don't stop

And all my peoples uptown ya don't stop

That includes the Bronx a' Harlem ya don't stop

Now to that girl Ramelle ya don't stop

I say because Ladies First ya don't stop

And to the JB's, ya don't stop

And De La Soul, ya don't stop

To my Brand Nubians ya don't stop

And to my Leaders of the New ya don't stop

To my man Large Professor ya don't stop

Pete Rock for the beat ya don't stop

Everybody in the place ya don't stop

Ya keep it on, to the rhythm, ya don't stop

And last but not least on the sure shot

It's the Zulu nation

“Buggin’ Out"

LYRICS BY PHIFE DOG AND Q-TIP

[Phife Dawg]:

Yo, microphone check one two what is this

The five foot assassin with the ruffneck business

I float like gravity, never had a cavity

Got more rhymes than the Winans got family

No need to sweat Arsenio to gain some type of fame

No shame in my game cause I'll always be the same

Styles upon styles upon styles is what I have

You wanna diss the Phifer but you still don't know the half

I sport New Balance sneakers to avoid a narrow path

Messin round with this you catch ?the sizin of em?

I never half step cause I'm not a half stepper

Drink a lot of soda so they call me Dr. Pepper

Refuse to com-pete with BS competition

Your name ain't Special Ed so won't you Seckle With the Mission

I never walk the streets, think it's all about me

Even though deep in my heart, it really could be

I just try my best to like go all out

Some might even say yo shorty black you're buggin’ out

[Q-Tip]:

Uhhh, uhhh, uhhh, uh!

Zulu Nation, brothers that's creation

Minds get flooded, ejaculation

right on the two inch tape

The Abstract poet incognito, runsss the cape

Not the best not the worst and occasionally I curse to get my

point across, so bust, the floss

As I go in betweeen, the grit and the dirt

Listen to the mission listen Miss as I do work, umm

as I crack the, monotone...(this video ends here)...

REST OF RAP:

Children of the jazz so, get your own

Smokin R&B cause they try to do me

or the best of the pack but they can't do rap

For it's Abstract, orig-inal

You can't get your own and that's, pitiful

I know I'd be the man if I cold yanked the plug

on R&B, but I can't and that's bugged

Buggin out, buggin out, buggin out you're buggin out (repeat 8X)

[Phife Dawg]:

Yo when you bug out, you usually have a reason for the action

Sometimes you don't it's just for mere satisfaction

People be houndin, always surroundin

Pulsin, just like a migraine poundin

You don't really fret, you stay in your sense

?Comafied? your feeling, of absolute tense

You soar off to another world, deep in your mind

But people seem to take that, as being unkind

"Oh yo he's acting stank," really on a regal?

A man of the fame not a man of the people

Believe that if you wanna but I tell you this much

Riding on the train with no dough, sucks

Once again a case of your feet in my Nike's

If a crowd is in my realm I'm saying -- mic please

Hip-hop is living, can't yank the plug

if you do the result, will end up kind of bugged

[Q-Tip]:

Yo, I am not an invalid although I used to smoke the weed out

Ali Shaheed Muhammad used to say I had to be out

Schemin on the cookies with the crazy boomin back buns

Pushin on the real ?hardest? so we can have the big fun

When I left for Rosie I was Boulevard status

Battling a MC was when Tip was at his baddest

It was one MC after one MC

What the world could they be wanting see from little old me

Do I have the formula to save the world?

Or was it just because I used to swipe the women and all the girls

I'm the type of brother with the crazy extended hand kid

Dissed by all my brothers I was all up what my man did

Supposed to be my man but now I wonder cause you're feeble

I go out with the strongest and I seperate the evils

it's your brain against my mind, for those about to boot out

All you nasty critters even though you see I bug out

Buggin out, buggin out, buggin out you're buggin out (repeat 8X)

Red Bull Music Academy

All,

In the entire history of hiphop post-1985 there are IMO only 5 or 6 (OK maybe 7) absolutely indispensable and truly innovative MCs who not only revolutionized but MASTERED the delicate art of the creative synthesis of language/music/studio production/live performance and Q-Tip is easily one of the top 2 or 3 artists to this date who have made hiphop actually MATTER and mean something important as art, science, and PHILOSOPHY (which is to say REAL LIFE)…This talk like his artistic work generally is the invaluable expression of a rare and brilliant visionary whose encyclopedic knowledge and overall erudition as an artist is matched by his deep humanity, insight, humility, humor, and CLARITY regarding not only his own extraordinary work but that of others…

Kofi

Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest (RBMA New York 2013 Lecture)

 

Published on April 10, 2015

Q-Tip is one of hip hop's greatest MCs and producers. In this talk, he chats about legendary recordings with A Tribe Called Quest, Nas and J Dilla.

https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2018/03/29/597941026/a-tribe-called-quests-last-video-paints-a-grim-gripping-reality

 

A Tribe Called Quest's Last Video Paints A Grim, Gripping Reality






March 29, 2018















by  Rodney Carmichael 
NPR
 



A Tribe Called Quest recontextualizes "The Space Program" with a conceptual look at the future.  Apple Music/screenshot by NPR 
 
When A Tribe Called Quest released We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service days after the November 2016 presidential election, it felt as if the group had recorded the album in a prescient state.

The death of Phife Dawg eight months earlier had come in the middle of making their first album in 18 years. Yet his transition ran parallel to the political upheaval afoot as Barack Obama's presidency gave way to a campaign season that dragged all of America's ugly skeletons of racial and gender bias back to the forefront.




 
Music Interviews 
 


'Musicians Don't Retire': A Tribe Called Quest On The Work Ahead


The LP that practically predicted the election day outcome gets a new visual today, and it's being billed as ATCQ's final video. It's for "The Space Program," the first — and possibly the most political — song on the album rife with deep sociopolitical context. Directed by Warren Fu, it's a high-concept short film that propels present-day phenomena — from the racially-charged displacement of inner-city gentrification to the police killings of unarmed African-Americans — into a grim Afrofuturist reality in which the "space program" is really code for the systematic removal of black people. 

Q-Tip, Jarobi and Ali Shaheed Muhammad are found seemingly captive on a spaceship to nowhere, while Phife's presence is represented by a glowing sphere-like oracle. The video climaxes with cameos from Erykah Badu, Black Thought, Vince Staples, Pharrell, Common, Talib Kweli, Questlove, Rosario Dawson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Kelly Rowland and Doug E. Fresh.

The full eight-minute video for "The Space Program" premieres exclusively on Apple Music. It's one among thousands of music videos added to the ad-free subscription service today as an extension of its digital music catalog.





• A Tribe Called Quest

THE MUSIC OF  TRIBE CALLED QUEST: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH A TRIBE CALLED QUEST:

A Tribe Called Quest - We The People

 

 

A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory [Full Album] 

 

 

A Tribe Called Quest - Electric Relaxation 

 

 

A Tribe Called Quest - Can I Kick It? 

 

 

A Tribe Called Quest - Award Tour 

 

 

A Tribe Called Quest - Scenario

 

 

A Tribe Called Quest - The Space Program

 

 

A Tribe Called Quest - Can I Kick It 

 

 

A Tribe Called Quest Mix.

 

 

A Tribe Called Quest - Jazz (We've Got) Buggin' Out 

 

 

A Tribe Called Quest: "The Best of" Tribute 90s Old School 

 

 

A Tribe Called Quest Full Set Panorama NYC 2017 (Part 1)

 

A Tribe Called Quest - Stressed Out ft. Faith Evans 

 

 

A Tribe Called Quest - 1nce Again

 

 

A Tribe Called Quest - The Donald 

 

 

FULL ALBUM We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your .

 

 

A Tribe Called Quest - Check the Rhime [1-28-93]

 

 

A Tribe Called Quest - Midnight 

 

 

A Tribe Called Quest-8 Million Stories 

 

 

A TRIBE CALLED QUEST (1996 final RAP CITY INTERVIEW):

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tribe_Called_Quest

A Tribe Called Quest

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

A Tribe Called Quest perform in 2009.

(Left to right: Jarobi White, Q-Tip, Phife Dawg)

 

A Tribe Called Quest was an American hip-hop collective formed in 1985^[2] and originally composed of MC and main producer Q-Tip,^[3] MC Phife Dawg, DJ and co-producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and MC Jarobi White, who left the group in 1991 after the release of their debut album. White continued to contribute to the band sporadically before rejoining for their 2006 reunion. Along with De La Soul, the group was a central part of the Native Tongues and enjoyed the most commercial success out of all the groups to emerge from that collective. The group released six albums between 1990 and 2016. The band broke up in 1998 after releasing their fifth album. In 2006, the group reunited and toured the United States. In 2016, they released their sixth and final album, which was still incomplete when Phife Dawg died suddenly in March 2016, and was completed by the other members after his death.^[4]
The group is regarded as a pioneer of alternative hip-hop music.^[5] John Bush of AllMusic called them "the most intelligent, artistic rap group during the 1990s."^[6] The Source gave the group's debut album a rating of five 'mics,' the first time the magazine gave out this rating.^[7][8] In 2005, A Tribe Called Quest received a Special Achievement Award at the Billboard R&B Hip Hop Awards in Atlanta.^[9] In 2007, the group was formally honored at the 4th VH1 Hip Hop Honors. 

Beginnings

 

Q-Tip (Kamaal Ibn John Fareed) and Phife Dawg (Malik Izaak Taylor) were childhood friends who grew up together in Queens, New York. Initially, Q-Tip performed as a solo artist under the name MC Love Child, occasionally teaming up with Ali Shaheed Muhammad as a rapper and DJ duo. While the duo frequently made demos with Phife, then known as Crush Connection, Phife only became a full member once Jarobi White joined. The group's final name was coined in 1988 by the Jungle Brothers, who attended the same high school as Q-Tip and Muhammad.^[6] Q-Tip made two separate appearances on the Jungle Brothers' debut album, Straight Out the Jungle, in the songs "Black is Black" and "The Promo".
In early 1989, the group signed a demo deal with Geffen Records and produced a five-song demo, which included later album tracks "Description of a Fool", "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo" and "Pubic Enemy". Geffen decided against offering the group a recording contract, and the group was granted permission to shop for a deal elsewhere. After receiving lucrative offers for multi-album deals from a variety of labels, the group opted for a modest deal offered by Jive Records. Jive Records was then known as an independent rap label that partly owed its success to building the careers of artists Boogie Down Productions and Too Short. 

Albums

People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm

 

Main article: People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm

Less than a year after signing with Jive, the group released their first single, "Description of a Fool". Their debut album People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm was marked by a playful lyrical approach, as on the call-and-response-inspired "Can I Kick It?"; light-hearted content like safe sex, vegetarianism, and youthful experiences; and to a lesser extent, an idiosyncratic sense of humor which was free from much of the posturing of both hardcore hip-hop and the more left-wing aspects of conscious hip-hop.
People's Instinctive Travels was initially met with mixed reviews. Count Dracula of The Village Voice called the album "upliftingly dope" and "so sweet and lyrical, so user-friendly. You could play it in the background when you're reading Proust." The Source gave it five mics, the magazine's highest possible rating.^[7] However, Chuck Eddy of Rolling Stone wrote that the album "is one of the least danceable rap albums ever", and he went on to say "it's impossible to imagine how people will put this music to use."^[10]
The album only gained momentum after the release of the singles "Bonita Applebum" and "Can I Kick It?", and went gold six years later. After its release, White left the group for personal reasons. A remastered 25th anniversary edition of People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm is now available on Legacy Recordings and RCA Records.^[11]
 

The Low End Theory

 

Main article: The Low End Theory

The group continued to gather a loyal fan base through touring and guest appearances such as on De La Soul's "A Roller Skating Jam Named "Saturdays". The group's second album, The Low End Theory, was released on September 24, 1991, with "Check the Rhime" as the lead single. Based around a sample from Average White Band's "Love Your Life", the song largely established the vocal interplay between Q-Tip and Phife; until then, most of the group's songs had only featured vocals by Q-Tip. 

The two MCs began to focus on a range of social issues, from date rape ("The Infamous Date Rape") to consumerism ("Skypager"). The songs were noticeably shorter, more abrupt, and bass-heavy. Guests on the album included Leaders of the New School (which included Busta Rhymes), Brand Nubian, and Vinia Mojica. Their innovative sampling, layering, and structuring of jazz records led many critics to label their style as jazz rap–a term which Q-Tip disapproved of, as he felt that while it described groups such as Stetsasonic well, it misinterpreted A Tribe Called Quest, who (aside from songs such as "Jazz (We've Got)") did not always base their songs around jazz. 

Around this time, the group began to make experimental and visually stylish music videos with director Jim Swaffield, among them the promo clip for "Check the Rhime," set in their childhood neighborhood of St. Albans, Queens, the black-and-white "Jazz (We've Got)" which cuts abruptly into its colorful B-side "Buggin' Out," and the anthem "Scenario," which simulated a computer desktop. A live performance of "Scenario" with Leaders of the New School on The Arsenio Hall Show lead to greater popularity.
The album was produced by A Tribe Called Quest along with Skeff Anselm (on two tracks). Pete Rock created the original rough draft version for "Jazz (We've Got)". In contrast to most of the hip-hop albums released in the early 1990s, which featured rough beats at relatively fast tempos, such as Ice Cube's Amerikkka's Most Wanted or Dr. Dre's The Chronic, The Low End Theory featured low-key, bass-heavy, and plodding beats which emphasized the pensive nature of the record. The recording sessions and mixing for the album was handled by Bob Power at Battery Studios in New York City. 

Rolling Stone lauded the album, saying, "Each time Q-Tip rhymes over Carter's bass lines, the groove just gets deeper."^[12] The publication also named it #154 among their Best 500 Albums of All Time, and also as one of the Essential Recordings of the 90s.^[13] Further praise was given by Spin, which listed it among the 90 Greatest Albums of the '90s.^[14] AllMusic calls the record "one of the best hip-hop albums in history", and "a record that sounds better with each listen."^[15] Pop Matters music editor Dave Heaton said of the album:

Anything really worth writing about is nearly indescribable; that's the conundrum of writing about music. Any 30-second snippet of The Low End Theory will go further to convince of the album's greatness than anything I can write. I could easily write an entire book on this one album and still feel like I've hardly said anything. Still, I could do worse things with my time than try to capture even an iota of the enthusiasm I feel each time I play this album. The Low End Theory is a remarkable experience, as aesthetically and emotionally rewarding as any work of music I can think of.^[16]

The album was rated:

• 5 Mic Album award from The Source (1991)
• #2 in Ego Trip's Hip Hop's 25 Greatest Albums by Year 1980–98 (1999)
• #53 in Blender's 100 Greatest American Albums of All time (2002)
• #56 in Pitchfork Media's Top 100 Favorite Records of the 1990s (2003)
• #154 in Rolling Stone's Best 500 Albums of All Time (2003)
• Spin Magazine
  • #32 in Top 90 Albums of the 90s (1999)
  • #38 in Top 100 Albums of the Last 20 Years (2005)
  • #87 in 100 Alternative Albums (1995)

The Low End Theory performed very well on the charts and was RIAA-certified gold on February 19, 1992; it reached platinum status by 1995. In the aftermath of their success, the group once again toured and contributed the song "Hot Sex" to the soundtrack for the film Boomerang in 1992.
The new jack swing group Wreckx-N-Effect did take exception to "Jazz (We've Got)", misinterpreting some lines as a diss:

I'm all into my music cuz it's how I make papes
Tryin' to make hits, like Kid Capri mix tapes
Me sweat another? I do my own thing
Strictly hardcore tracks, not a new jack swing

This misunderstanding resulted in a melee in which Q-Tip sustained an eye injury. Thus, during the shooting of the promo clip for "Hot Sex", he wore a ski mask to cover up the abrasion. Soon after, Q-Tip was chosen to play the part of Markell, Janet Jackson's ill-fated partner, in the John Singleton-directed drama Poetic Justice, which also starred Tupac Shakur. The film led to a friendship between Q-Tip and Jackson, and they would go on to collaborate on her song "Got 'Til It's Gone" from her album The Velvet Rope, in 1997. 

Midnight Marauders

 

Main article: Midnight Marauders

Trugoy of De La Soul appeared on the refrain of "Award Tour", the group's lead single from their third album Midnight Marauders, released on November 9, 1993. Coming on the heels of The Low End Theory, the album was highly anticipated. Boosted by their raised profile, "Award Tour" became the group's highest charting single to date, and helped to land the album in the US Top Ten. Entertainment Weekly called the album "as fresh as their first... rappers Phife and Q-Tip manage to hold attention without resorting to gun references or expletives..."^[17] NME Likewise, Melody Maker said "A Tribe Called Quest have expanded their vision with a lyrical gravitas and a musical lightness of touch that has hitherto eluded them across a whole album".^[17] The album was voted #21 by The Village Voice in that year's Pazz & Jop Critics Poll.^[17]
 
Musically, Midnight Marauders built upon many of the ideas present on The Low End Theory, although the results were noticeably different, and the music was more immediate. Whereas Theory had been an exercise in subdued minimalism, and simplicity, the grooves found on Marauders are mostly up tempo, and full of charging drums, suave basslines, melodious riffs, complementary horns, and catchy hooks, all delivered in an efficient 50 minute time frame. The intermittent voice of a tour guide (the titular 'midnight marauder') also serves to add further cohesion to the album. 

The lead single "Award Tour" contained a loop taken from Weldon Irvine's "We Gettin' Down". One of the outside musicians who contributed to the record was Raphael Saadiq (credited as Raphael Wiggins) of Tony! Toni! Toné!, on the song "Midnight". Producers Large Professor and Skeff Anselm also worked on two tracks, "Keep It Rollin'" and "8 Million Stories", the former also rapping over his production.
Lyrically, the album benefited from an even more confident verbal interplay between Phife Dawg and Q-Tip used to its fullest on songs like "Electric Relaxation" and "Oh My God". The opening song "Steve Biko (Stir It Up)" is named in honor of slain South African human rights activist and revolutionary Steve Biko. Some of the other topics on the album are police harassment and nocturnal activity ("Midnight"), religious faith ("God Lives Through"), and hip hop, as in "We Can Get Down", where Phife raps:

How can a reverend preach, when a rev can't define
The music of our youth from 1979
We rap about what we see, meaning reality
From people bustin' caps and like Mandela being free
Not every MC be with the negativity
We have a slew of rappers pushin' positivity

Another song, the sometimes controversial "Sucka Nigga", deals with the candid use of the word "nigga". In the song, Q-Tip notes the negative purpose of the word but subsequently emphasizes its subjective nature when he says:

It means that we will never grow, you know the word dummy
Other niggas in the community think its crummy
But I don't, neither does the youth cause we
Em-brace adversity it goes right with the race
And being that we use it as a term of endearment
Niggas start to bug to the dome as where the fear went

The three singles for the album had memorable music videos, for example the second single "Electric Relaxation", which was shot in black and white in a diner. The third single was "Oh My God", with a video showing the group in a neighborhood setting and surrounded by young fans. It also included a cameo by a typically manic Busta Rhymes. The group performed as one of a handful of rap acts at the 1994 Lollapalooza Festival, among acts such as The Smashing Pumpkins, Stereolab and The Verve.
Also in 1994, one of the sparks of the East Coast and West Coast hip-hop rivalry occurred at The Source Awards, when Tupac pushed A Tribe Called Quest from the stage. It was later found that this apparent act of disrespect was accidental.^[18]

Intermission and The Ummah

Midnight Marauders remains A Tribe Called Quest's fastest-selling album; it was certified platinum on January 11, 1995, less than two years after its release. The album's success allowed the group a greater financial freedom and the members took a short break before the recording of their next album. Q-Tip produced several tracks for other artists including "One Love" for Nas, "Illusions (Remix)" for Cypress Hill, and three tracks on Mobb Deep's The Infamous.
Phife, who rapped on "Oh My God" that he owned "more condoms than TLC", made cameo appearances on that group's hugely successful album, Crazy Sexy Cool, in 1994. That same year, he also married his fiancée and relocated to Atlanta, Georgia. Ali Shaheed Muhammad worked on outside projects with artists such as D'Angelo ("Brown Sugar"), Shaquille O'Neal ("Where Ya At?"), and Gil Scott-Heron ("Don't Give Up"). The group contributed to The Show soundtrack in 1995, before returning the following year with their fourth album. 

While on tour, Q-Tip's friend Amp Fiddler introduced him to a young producer from Detroit named Jay Dee. At the suggestion of Q-Tip, Jay Dee joined him and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, forming a production unit known as "The Ummah" (Arabic for "the [worldwide] Muslim community"). The Ummah handled the production of the following two albums.

Beats, Rhymes and Life

Main article: Beats, Rhymes and Life

Beats, Rhymes and Life, the group's fourth album, was recorded during the turbulent East Coast–West Coast hip hop rivalry with "Get A Hold" and "Keep It Moving" referring to it.
The Ummah's production style was a smoother (but darker) hybrid of the group's previous albums, where the snare possessed a much sharper crack on most tracks. Ali added: "Everything's too technical now, too overdone. We're sampling less on this album. Nothing extravagant, nothing far out." Jay Dee, a big fan of the Tribe, appeared to have had a hand in re-shaping the sound, charting new rhythmic territory with songs like "Keeping It Moving", or "Word Play". Consequence, Q-Tip's cousin, and an aspiring rapper, was present on six songs, including the second single "Stressed Out". Phife Dawg later stated that this was when he began to lose interest in the group:

I really felt like with Midnight Marauders I came into my own. By the time when Beats, Rhymes and Life came out I started feelin' like I didn't fit in any more. Q-Tip and Ali had converted to Islam and I didn't. Music felt like a job; like I was just doin' it to pay bills. I never want my music to feel like just a job. They would schedule studio time at the last minute. I'd catch a plane from Atlanta to be in New York and when I got to the studio, no one would be there. They would have canceled the session without telling me. Seemed like the management was concerned with other folks not me. But I never lost my confidence.^[19]

The album shot straight to #1 in the charts and went gold by the end of the year; it would go platinum by 1998. It was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rap Album, while the lead single, "1nce Again", was nominated for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group. Critical reactions were divided but mostly positive. Rolling Stone called it "near-flawless", going on to say that "few hip-hop acts have so sharply captured the surreal quality that defines what it means to be African-American, a quality in which poker-faced humor and giddy tragedy play tag team with reality."^[20] The Source awarded it 4 out of 5 mics and called The Ummah "the most proficient in the rap game at using samples as instruments in themselves".^[20] Despite his apparent lack of motivation Spin thought Phife sounded "tougher and more playful than ever", while Melody Maker saw the album as "providing both their best and worst thus far", and "magnetic yet frustrating".^[20] In a 1998 farewell article in The Source, Questlove summarized the album's partially frosty reception:

1996 was full of memories whose soundtracks were more "gonna make you dance", whereas Tribe wanted "to make you think". Funny how if this was any other group there would be accolades galore. But by this time most attitudes were, "if Tribe ain't moving the world with each release, then we won't stand for nothing less."

Following Beats, Rhymes and Life, the group appeared on the Men in Black soundtrack with the song "Same Ol' Thing", and released, The Jam, a 4-track EP which included the aforementioned song, "Mardi Gras At Midnight" (with Rah Digga) and two songs from Beats, Rhymes and Life, "Get A Hold" and "Jam". 1997 also saw the first coming together of the three main Native Tongue groups since 1989, when the Jungle Brothers invited both Tribe and De La Soul to guest on "How Ya Want It We Got It", a cut from their album Raw Deluxe. The Ummah continued producing for a diverse range of artists such as Janet Jackson, Keith Murray, Faith Evans, and Whitney Houston. 

The Love Movement and split

 

Main article: The Love Movement

Before The Love Movement was released the group announced that this would be their last album. In an interview with The Source, the group cited their frustration with Jive Zomba as a significant factor in the breakup. Phife said:

I felt like I was happy to be on, of course. It took me a minute to latch on to the business side of things, 'cause it was just a happy-go-lucky time. And then eventually, as time went on, it started to slap me in my face. But as far as record labels, or whoever, they're not gonna do us right... As far as our label, I really have no comment, duke.

The Love Movement was preceded by "Find a Way"; a song memorable for its swirly otherworldly production and catchy staccato hook. Musically, the somewhat somber tone of the previous album was largely absent and replaced by a familiar carefree optimism. Tracks like "Give Me", with Noreaga exemplify the group's approach. Driven by a pulsing beat, the opening song "Start It Up" was perhaps even more minimal than anything on The Low End Theory. Likewise, "Against The World" relies on little more than crisply mixed down drums and a two note bassline. The theme of the album was firmly focused around the topic of love – love for oneself, love for another, love for mankind, love in the face of hate.
Critical reception for The Love Movement was fairly positive, although some viewed it as too subtle. Rolling Stone remarked that "the mature, accomplished niceness of The Love Movement proves that the Tribe still have the skills – they're just short on thrills."^[21] The album was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rap Album, in 1999. 

We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service

 

Main article: We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service

After Phife's death from diabetes on March 22, 2016, Epic Records CEO L.A. Reid revealed in August that the label would be releasing a new A Tribe Called Quest album in the near future. Reid said of the album, "[It is] a brand new album that they recorded before Phife Dawg passed away. I'm really happy about it man, it's really something special. It's one of the things I'm most excited about over everything we're working on.'^[22] The album, We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service was subsequently announced in October for a November 11 release.^[23]
The group had begun work on the album following their appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on November 13, 2015, the same night of the terrorist attacks in Paris. Feeling "charged", the group put aside their differences, and decided to record their final album in secrecy.^[4] The album was incomplete when Phife Dawg died, but the surviving members continued to work on the album following his death.^[4]
To promote the album, the group appeared on Saturday Night Live the day after its release and performed two songs in front of a mural of Phife Dawg.^[24] Speaking with Billboard, Q-Tip said the group is considering a final world tour to promote the album before permanently disbanding.^[25]
The band performed their final concert on September 9, 2017 at the Bestival festival in Dorset, England.^[26]

Solo ventures

Q-Tip

 

Under the management of Violator, Q-Tip launched a successful solo career, which saw two sizable hits ("Vivrant Thing", and "Breathe and Stop"), and the Gold-certified album Amplified, released in 1999. The album was produced by Q-Tip and Jay Dee (as The Ummah), and DJ Scratch.
After Amplified, Q-Tip changed directions and recorded 2002's Kamaal/The Abstract, an album which saw him in the role of singer and bandleader. Unlike his work with A Tribe Called Quest, or his own solo work, Kamaal was constructed around live music, and "abstract" song concepts, all orchestrated by Q-Tip himself. Arista Records refused to release the album, fearing it would be unmarketable coming from a rapper, resulting in Q-Tip leaving the label.^[27] Undeterred, he recorded 2005's Open, a slightly more accessible album, featuring contributions from André 3000, Common, and D'Angelo. After signing with Universal Motown Records, once again, the record was rejected by the label.^[27] He released the largely self-produced The Renaissance under the label in late 2008.^[28] Kamaal/The Abstract was released a year later on Battery Records. 

Phife Dawg

 

The most notable of Q-Tip's critics was Phife, who took his former partner to task on his solo album Ventilation: Da LP, released in 2000. The Hi-Tek-produced lead single, "Flawless", contained the lines "Go 'head, play yourself with them ho-like hooks / sing ballads if it's all about the Maxwell look". Ventilation included production by Jay Dee and Pete Rock. Q-Tip and Phife soon patched up their differences. Since then, Phife, who was diabetic, maintained a relatively low profile whilst recording his long-delayed follow-up album, Songs In The Key Of Phife: Volume 1 (Cheryl's Big Son). He died on March 22, 2016 due to complications from diabetes.^[29][30]
 

Ali Shaheed Muhammad

 

Teaming up with two other artists from former groups, Raphael Saadiq of Tony! Toni! Toné!, and Dawn Robinson of En Vogue, Ali Shaheed's next project was Lucy Pearl. The group scored two hit singles with "Dance Tonight", and with "Don't Mess With My Man", and their self-titled album was certified Gold a few months after its release in 2000. Following a dispute between Saadiq and Robinson, the latter left the group and was replaced by Joi; however, this new incarnation would only last for the remainder of touring.
Ali Shaheed then focused on developing a stable of artists, most of whom were showcased on his debut solo album Shaheedullah and Stereotypes, released independently in 2004. In 2013, Ali Shaheed co-hosted the hip-hop podcast "Microphone Check" on NPR Music with Frannie Kelly. The show parted ways with NPR in 2016.^[31]
 

Reunion

 

A Tribe Called Quest first reunited in 2003, recording the song "I C U (Doin' It)" featuring Erykah Badu.^[32] It was supposed to appear on a Violator compilation, which was not released.^[32] On August 27, 2004, the group headlined Street Scene, a music festival in San Diego.
In 2006, the group again reunited and performed several sold-out concerts in the U.S., Canada and Japan. A Tribe Called Quest was a co-headliner at the 2006 Bumbershoot festival in Seattle. The group appeared in 2K Sports' Bounce Tour promoting the NBA 2K7 video game and a remix of their song, "Lyrics to Go", was included in the game. According to Phife, A Tribe Called Quest planned to release an album since they owe Jive Records one more in their six-album contract. The date of its release was never confirmed, and Phife urged fans to hold on as the group does not wish to release an LP which might damage their reputation. Speaking about the possibility of a new album showing up soon, Phife said:

Man, we was only 18–19 when we first got started. [When] We broke up we were still like 28. Now we are 35–36. It'd be real different being in the studio. It would be real interesting to see where Q-Tip is. It would all be on a much higher level. But we are all into such different stuff from way back then. We'd need at least a solid month to work on something. Trying to get all of us together for that much time. … I don't see that happening.^[19]

A Tribe Called Quest was the headlining act in 2008 at the Rock the Bells series of concerts,^[33] and were co-headliners on the 2010 Rock the Bells festival series.
The group reformed to play a handful of select festivals throughout the summer of 2013, including Yahoo! Wireless in London,^[34] Splash! in Germany,^[35] OpenAir Frauenfeld in Switzerland,^[36] and in Los Angeles at H2O Music Festival.^[37] In November 2013, two of the four New York shows for Kanye West's The Yeezus Tour featured A Tribe Called Quest as supporting acts.^[38] According to statements made by Q-Tip at the time, these were A Tribe Called Quest's final performances.^[39]
On November 13, 2015, the group reunited to perform on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. That same day, the group reissued their debut album, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. The reissue includes remixes from Pharrell Williams, J. Cole and CeeLo Green.^[40] In commemoration of the reissue, they participated in an AMA on Reddit where users asked the group questions.^[41]
Phife died on March 22, 2016, and on November 12, the remaining members performed on Saturday Night Live. The remaining members also performed with Anderson .Paak, Busta Rhymes, and Consequence during the 59th Annual Grammy Awards on February 12, 2017.
In the summer of 2017, the group performed at a number of festivals. On September 9, 2017, the group headlined a show at Bestival in Dorset, England. The performance included multiple tributes to Phife Dawg, with his vocals being played from studio recordings. Q-Tip proclaimed the set the group's last ever performance. The final song performed was "We the People....", which was performed several times. 

Film

 

The group was the subject of the critically acclaimed 2011 documentary film titled Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest, directed by Michael Rapaport.^[42]

 

Discography

 

Main article: A Tribe Called Quest discography

Studio albums

• People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (1990)
• The Low End Theory (1991)
• Midnight Marauders (1993)
• Beats, Rhymes and Life (1996)
• The Love Movement (1998)
• We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service (2016)

Compilation albums
 

• Revised Quest for the Seasoned Traveller (1992)
• The Anthology (1999)
• Hits, Rarities & Remixes (2003)
• The Lost Tribes (2006)
• The Best of A Tribe Called Quest (2008)

 

References

 

"A Tribe Called Quest reunite for performance on Jimmy Fallon — watch". Consequence of Sound.

"Biography". A Tribe Called Quest. Archived from the original on 2012-07-08. Retrieved 2014-04-24.

Exclusive: Q-Tip Interview. MOOVMNT.com. Retrieved on 2017-06-25.

Touré (November 2, 2016). "Loss Haunts A Tribe Called Quest's First Album in 18 Years". The New York Times. Retrieved November 4, 2016.

"A Tribe Called Quest Biography". Rolling Stone. 2014-04-19. Retrieved 2014-04-24.

allmusic ((( A Tribe Called Quest > Biography )))

Nisha (April 17, 2015). "Today in Hip Hop History: A Tribe Called Quest Releases Debut Album". The Source.

5 Mic Albums. The Source. Retrieved 2010-09-15.

"Honors Khan, A Tribe Called Quest". Billboard. Retrieved 2014-04-24.

"Archived copy". Archived from the original on May 1, 2009. Retrieved June 24, 2007.

Legacy Recordings. "Legacy". Sony Legacy. Retrieved 2016-03-23.

"Music News: Latest and Breaking Music News". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2014-04-24.

[1] Archived February 24, 2009, at the Wayback Machine.

"Music: The Low End Theory (CD) by A Tribe Called Quest (Artist)". Tower.com. 1991-09-24. Retrieved 2014-04-24.

allmusic ((( The Low End Theory > Overview )))

[2] Archived May 25, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.

"Music: Midnight Marauders (CD) by A Tribe Called Quest (Artist), 106621278". Tower.com. 1993-11-09. Retrieved 2014-04-24.

HipHopDX (7 September 2012). "- HipHopDX". HipHopDX.

"Archived copy". Archived from the original on December 21, 2010. Retrieved October 11, 2007.

"Music: Beats Rhymes & Life (CD) by A Tribe Called Quest (Artist)". Tower.com. 1996-07-30. Retrieved 2014-04-24.

"Archived copy". Archived from the original on April 11, 2010. Retrieved October 11, 2007.

"Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2016-08-22. Retrieved 2016-08-19.

Strauss, Matthew (November 3, 2016). "A Tribe Called Quest Reveal Artwork for New Album We got it from Here Thank You 4 Your service". Pitchfork. Retrieved November 4, 2016.

Young, Alex (13 November 2016). "A Tribe Called Quest do Phife Dawg proud with spectacular SNL performance — watch". Consequence of Sound. Retrieved 19 November 2016.

Wade, Cameron. "A Tribe Called Quest Release Revolutionary "We The People" Video, Announce World Tour". pastemagazine.com. Retrieved 19 November 2016.

Ivey, Justin-. "That's A Wrap: A Tribe Called Quest's Final Show Was Bestival 2017". HipHopDX. Retrieved 28 October 2017.

Q-Tip on finally getting his second album out Entertainment Weekly. Accessed on April 20, 2017.

Stephen Clark - Design. "Q-TIP: On A Quest".

Allhiphop. "Hip-Hop News, Rumors, Rap Music & Videos -AllHipHop » Phife Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest, Dead At 45". Hip-Hop News, Rumors, Rap Music & Videos -AllHipHop.

"A Tribe Called Quest's Phife Dawg Has Died". HYPETRAK. Retrieved 2016-03-23.

"Microphone Check - Ali Shaheed Muhammad".

Del F. Cowie "Verses From The Abstract". Exclaim!. Retrieved on 2017-04-20.

Rock the Bells – International Festival Series Archived May 1, 2008, at the Wayback Machine.

"Wireless Festival 2014 | Official Line-up and Tickets for 2014". Wirelessfestival.co.uk. Retrieved 2014-04-24.

"splash! Festival". Splash-festival.de. Retrieved 2014-04-24.

"Openair Frauenfeld | 2014". Openair-frauenfeld.ch. Retrieved 2014-04-24.

"H2O Music Festival Home Page | H2O Music Festival 2013 – Los Angeles, CA". H2omusicfestival.com. 2013-08-17. Archived from the original on April 29, 2014. Retrieved 2014-04-24.

"A Tribe Called Quest Is Set To Reunite For Kanye West's Tour - XXL". Xxlmag.com. 2013-10-15. Retrieved 2014-04-24.

"A Tribe Called Quest Last Show NYC Yeezus". Complex. 16 October 2013. Retrieved 2014-04-24.

"A Tribe Called Quest to Reunite on "The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon" - News". Pitchfork.com. Retrieved 2017-07-12.

"We are A Tribe Called Quest : Music". Reddit.com. Retrieved 2016-03-23.

42. Woods, Mecca; Rapaport, Michael (29 April 2011). "Michael Rapaport Discusses His Film Beats, Rhymes & Life @ Tribeca Film Fest" (Video). Society HAE (SHAE).

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to A Tribe Called Quest.

• Official website
• A Tribe Called Quest at Jive Records
• A Tribe Called Quest discography at Discogs