A Tribe Called Quest’s legacy of individuality

Hip-hop expanded so fast, MTV realized, “Hey we’re losing money and the kids.”  So they started Yo! MTV Raps on August 6, 1988, which bit the shit out of Ralph McDaniels’ hip hop show Video Music Box, which started in 1983 on public television, covering the genre through interviewing artists all over NYC underground hot spots like Nells, Latin Quarter and such. That’s how corporations operate; they are gentrifiers.

But their timing proved impeccable. From ’88-’90, hip-hop’s transformation, spurred by a new generation of talent who were inclusive—actively digging for rare records—sought out non-traditional sounds to embolden their moment at the mic, basically channeling the spirit of individualism. Bring you, not an archetype, to the pastiche.

I’ve always referred to it as the holy trinity: De La Soul, Beastie Boys, and A Tribe Called Quest all dropped seminal albums between ’89 and ’90 that had the most slow-drip effect on the macro level, but within the microcosm—the crews, record diggers, emcees and hip-hop junkies—it affected hip-hop so hard we still feel that magnanimous undertow pull today. That inner drive to be the emcee in you versus what people are expecting (Kendrick vs. Drake anyone?) started right in that three-year window from beats, rhymes, and eclectic tastes.

Three Feet High and Rising, Paul’s Boutique, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm all had the same effect on listeners by presenting culture, old vinyl, and effects of Reaganomics in three different manners. Bookending these records are Public Enemy’s 1988 classic It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and 1990’s Fear of a Black Planet produced by The Bomb Squad in complete frenetic glory. All five records made hardcore fans and hip-hop newbies say the same thing: “You mean you can do that….with hip-hop?” Yes, you can.

I never. Ever. Thought or even tried to comprehend that Q-Tip, the late Phife Dawg, DJ and co-producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and rapper Jarobi White—who at the start of their career were all well-adorned in Afrocentric garb, sporting dreadlocks, dashikis, and black medallions—becoming Rock and Roll Hall of Famers. Nah, I didn’t see it. Not many did. Those four guys from Queens who got together after high school?  

“We didn’t want to be like anybody else back then,” said Phife to NPR in 2015. “Biting was forbidden. You pretty much get slapped up for biting.”

But that sense of individuality, that inclusivity, that I’mma-do-me thing, that’s what brought so many to Tribe. On People’s the pause-tape symphony was churning out Lou Reed one second and then deep-crate Jimi Hendrix the next. On the time-bending staple “Can I Kick It?”, Q-Tip brings in the heavy swinging Dr. Lonnie Smith’s “Spinning Wheel,” utilizing drum hits, sideshow circus organ vamping, and just some good-bumpin’ vibes. Wild combos that in other people’s hands might not have worked, but these dudes—some might say nerds—loved music and understood the magic that it had to inspire others, including themselves.

That’s the trick. It made Tribe accessible without bending to convention one lick. It’s their superpower, being so influential. Making a hip-hop love song “Bonita Applebum” by being themselves, refusing to use gimmicks, elevating the legacy of a little known group produced by Roy Ayers called RAMP, and flipping that “Daylight” melody into the modernized zeitgeist, advancing jazz music to a new level. That, and they were crazy talented. (Fave line from Phife ever: “Money please, I get loose off of orange juice.”)

In 1991, they went back into the studio to record The Low End Theory, a title that referred to both the status of black men in society and bass frequencies in the music, which consequently clocks in at number 29 on Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums list from May of this year. (And even higher on our own Treble 100 list.)

While it was Midnight Marauders that followed in ’93, with the hit “Award Tour,” a track so well produced that when I DJ’ed, I’d mix it in under the outro of Steve Miller Band’s “Fly Like An Eagle” to unassuming bullshit Saturday night club nights where even the cornballiest of patrons would freak the fuck out, Low End Theory, to me, sets up ATCQ as universal. It showed they were able to make banging hip-hop that can appeal to everyone but designed for Black folks first—no gangster chronicles that certain white people can cosplay to—superior production from Q-Tip, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and the emergence of Bob Power. Add to it that it’s the Phife-is-a-killer-wordsmith album, and of course, out of an unplanned posse cut moment we get to hear the future, which is Busta Rhymes on “Scenario” with his career-defining “dungeon dragon” moment.

With the album setting a new precedent for deep resonating sound compression by double and tripling bass noises and samples, I’ve said before and I shall repeat: It’s a perfect album. There is not one moment to fast-forward through. The 14 songs whizz by with punk-rock brevity. As a sophomore follow-up, it ranks just above Paul’s Boutique by The Beastie Boys and just below De La Soul’s De La Soul is Dead. Engineered by Bob Power, who manufactured a prodigious career primarily from the merits bestowed here, he always referred to Low End Theory as “The Sgt. Peppers of Hip-Hop.”  

The yin-yang, zig-zag of Q-Tip and Phife Dawg on the mic contrasting each other to perfection by fulfilling the roles of foils for one another, laid out the formula that André 3000 and Big Boi would play in OutKast. “Butter” let everyone know that Phife Dawg was here to pull his weight, not just be emcee sidekick. Yet Q-Tip’s incessant proclivity to rightly shout out his generation of contemporaries—giving mic time to the Native Tongues, introducing the skillful bass work of jazz musician Ron Carter to the future generations, along with providing Busta Rhymes space to dispatch iconic fire bars during the climactic final dart “Scenario”—illuminates the point that movements don’t happen just by one entity. It takes multiple voices to amplify a message. 

So when Dave Chappelle inducted A Tribe Called Quest into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Saturday, October 19, 2024, by sharing with the crowd how Tribe asked him to perform on SNL with them, making him the host, after his being absent from network television for 12 years, it served as a reminder of a move this collective does again and again. Never hesitant to share their platform along with friends, a rarity not just in hip-hop but the entertainment industry at large. It spells out and makes it specifically clear, how a career becomes a movement by way of emblazoned collective voices.

As the late Phife said it best, “we were always into just being ourselves.”

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