Nov 11, 2016

@Fire Squad, @Rick James, @Jakey, @Eazy, @Worm, @rapmusik, @Translucent, @tpk, @BigCountry, @I FEEL LIKE KOBE, @PYT, @Vitaqua, @Tha Story, @Tone Riggz, @kanyesucksdealwithit, @Simon023, @Lord flacko, @Royston Drenthe, @Groovy Tony, @No my name is Cunner, @ZDucks, @RCN, @YDB, @swr, @LURI, @Fazers, @Kvp187, @Charlie Work, @flackohowubeen, @Dew, @Nuredin B, @Mraczewsky, @dester23, @Clive, @coryjay, @The Pinnacle, @SHUDEYE, @Scott Mescudi, @Lord Quas, @Trackz, @DrunkOffHennessy, @Gold, @Basiccc, @J Roc, @21 Squid, @MathWop, @APimpedOutButterfly, @Devil White, @soul intent, @Sons of The Silent Age, @Moondyne, @Joondi, @Heisenberg, @neomerge, @Boyz N The Suburbs, @DKomamura, @captain awesome, @Michael Myers, @Drench, @Love Fb, @jewtheiii, @gustavojax, @magicobraga, @Jay Zeus

Sorry for tagging everyone in that posted in the thread but this Complex cover story needs to be read.

http://au.complex.com/music/making-...mplexmag&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

 

Aug 20, 2016

http://mrwavvy.com/new-tribe-called-quest-album-way-says-l-reid/

To celebrate their podcast’s 1 year anniversary, Rap Radar released 2 special “No Guests!” episodes, both of which feautre surprise callers, mainly consisting of people who have previously appeared on the show. Among these esteemed guests was CEO of Epic Records, L.A. Reid, who had some exciting news to share with hosts Elliott Wilson and Brian “B.Dot” Miller.

When discussing upcoming plans for the label, Reid casually dropped some of the biggest album news we’d heard all year: “We have a Tribe Called Quest album coming, I’m really excited about that.” When asked if the album would feature unreleased Tribe recordings, Reid stated. “[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.”

Earlier this year, A Tribe Called Quest’s Malik “Phife Dawg” Taylor tragically passed away due to diabetes-related complications. At a memorial held for the rapper in Harlem, New York, fellow Epic Records signee Andre 3000 claimed that discussions had been made between he and Q-Tip about a potential Tribe/OutKast LP, but those plans ultimately never came together.

No specifics on a release date for the project just yet, for what will be the first A Tribe Called Quest album in nearly 20 years. Hear the full interview with L.A. Reid here (L.A. starts at 5:40, reveals the album news at 14:49).

I'm curious to how this would sound like! Thank you to @Ordinary Joel for the plug

UPDATE:

Cover Art:

 

Nov 3, 2016

Visited the Tribe mural in Queens this past weekend. It's located at the Nu-Clear Cleaners in St. Albans (on the boulevard of Linden). In the "Check The Rhime" video, Tribe are rapping on the roof of the Cleaners.

 

Nov 3, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/a...ction/arts&smid=tw-nytimesarts&smtyp=cur&_r=0

A must-read @Fire Squad, @Rick James, @Jakey, @Eazy, @Worm, @rapmusik, @Translucent, @tpk, @BigCountry, @I FEEL LIKE KOBE, @PYT, @Vitaqua, @Tha Story, @Tone Riggz,

Loss Haunts A Tribe Called​

Quest’s First Album in 18 Years​

Recorded just before the death of Phife Dawg in March, “We Got It
From Here, Thank You For Your Service” is heavy with his presence.

By TOURÉNOV. 2, 2016​

Q-Tip, left, and Jarobi White, members of A Tribe Called Quest, which is releasing “We Got It From Here, Thank You for Your Service.” Credit: Chad Batka for The New York Times​

ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J. — On March 22, at 3 a.m., Q-Tip and Phife Dawg were on the phone. The two rappers — lifelong friends from Queens and half of the influential hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest — were “yucking it up,” Q-Tip recalled, and talking about a project few people outside their inner circle knew was in the works: a new Tribe album, the first in 18 years.

Q-Tip was in the million-dollar recording studio he built in the basement of his stately New Jersey home; Phife was at his place in Oakland, Calif.

Phife was fired up about a potential track: “Yo, make sure you send me that beat. I’ve got to put some verses to it. That beat is fire!” Q-Tip said in a recent interview in the lounge of his studio, surrounded by white shelves holding hundreds of vinyl LPs. The lighthearted conversation ended around 4 a.m. and Q-Tip went back to work. Nineteen hours later, Phife’s manager called. His friend and lifelong collaborator was dead.

The cause was complications from diabetes; Phife was 45. The other members of A Tribe Called Quest were shattered. The rapper Jarobi White was at Q-Tip’s house and heard people screaming. “We broke down,” he said. “There were two puddles of goo on the floor.” The producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad was in Sherman Oaks, Calif., walking out of an Apple store with a replacement iPhone when the call came in. “I was in shock,” he said. Without any of his contacts, he stood paralyzed, unable to reach out to anyone.

“I had no idea that his days was numbered,” Q-Tip said. Retelling this story in the same room where he had had so many conversations with Phife, he became too emotional to speak. He buried his face in his hands and sobbed. Finally he said, “I just want to celebrate him, you know?”

On Friday, Nov. 11, A Tribe Called Quest will do just that, releasing on Epic Records “We Got It From Here, Thank You for Your Service,” the group’s sixth album. It features all four of the group’s members plus a host of guests — André 3000, Kendrick Lamar, Elton John, Jack White and Busta Rhymes, a longtime Tribe collaborator who made a heralded appearance on the 1992 posse cut “Scenario.” Busta Rhymes said he saw Q-Tip and Phife in the studio vibing the way they did in the old days. “I seen them laughing and joking and high-fiving, and you can just see that young, invigorated ‘we’re-just-getting-our-first-opportunity-to-do-this’ energy again!” he said. Q-Tip noted, “I hadn’t seen Phife that happy since we were kids.”

They went through so much to reach that point. Tribe assembled as teenagers in Queens — Q-Tip and Phife, who first met in church at the age of four; plus Mr. Muhammad, who created much of their music; and Mr. White, who Q-Tip has called “the spirit of the group.” In the early ’90s, they made what are widely considered two of hip-hop’s greatest albums: “The Low End Theory” and “Midnight Marauders.” (Mr. White left after recording “The Low End Theory” to pursue a career as a chef.) The group was known for thoughtful lyrics, jazz samples and a more artful, less macho, approach to hip-hop. Q-Tip was the artistic, esoteric, philosophical M.C. while Phife Dawg was the streetwise, confident yet humble rapper with a little Trinidadian “ruffneck” swag. “He’s like your common man’s homeboy,” said André 3000. “He’s like the dude next door that watched sports and is always talking about the game. And he was funny.”

Three of Tribe’s five albums went platinum, and the other two went gold, but the group’s influence extended far beyond sales figures. As part of the Native Tongues movement, which also included De La Soul, they were into Afrocentrism and positivity and showed a generation how to make music that was both fun and substantive. “Tip’s kind of like the father of all of us, like me, Kanye, Pharrell,” André 3000 said. “When you’re a kid, it’s kind of like, O.K., who am I going to be? Can I be Eazy-E? Nah. But Q-Tip? Yeah. He seems more like a common kind of person.”

The Apollo Theater marquee for Phife Dawg’s memorial service in April. Credit: Chad Batka for The New York Times​

Around the same time, a teenager in Detroit was also studying Tribe’s music. “They were trying to break new ground, and they had a musicologist’s attitude toward what they were doing with their samples,” Jack White said from his studio in Nashville. “I mean, you’ve got ‘Can I Kick It?’ over a Lou Reed sample from ‘Walk on the Wild Side.’ That really showed that they were miles and miles deeper than most other people in pop music.”


A Tribe Called Quest - "Can I Kick It?" Video by TribeCalledQuestVEVO

By the end of the ’90s, Tribe’s members had broken up. In the ensuing years, they would occasionally reconvene to do shows, but the relationship between Q-Tip and Phife was difficult at times, as can be seen in Michael Rapaport’s sometimes brutal 2011 documentary “Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest.” Q-Tip said the group had grown so popular that it was hard to maintain the friendships that were at its core. He also felt uncomfortable being cast as the de facto leader. “I’m more of a special-ops soldier,” he said.

Even still, Phife repeatedly asked about doing another group album; Q-Tip would respond, “Not now.” He was on a self-imposed sabbatical. “I wanted to rethink my life as an artist and as a man,” he explained.

He stepped out of the spotlight to re-energize himself and flowed into a yearslong period of spiritual rejuvenation. He studied music theory. He read a lot — Duke Ellington’s “Music Is My Mistress,” Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon,” George Orwell’s “1984,” the fiction of Paul Beatty, the poetry of Nikki Giovanni. He worked on his own poems. He tried all sorts of things.

From left, Q-Tip, Phife Dawg and Jarobi White at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, in 2013. Credit: Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images​

“I was celibate for like a year,” he said. “I just wanted to ensure my mental health as a human being.” Then one day he said to himself: “How much longer are you going to be here? It’s good that you sat and you’re reading these books and you’re leaving the girls alone but, like, get over yourself.” It was time to get back to work.

Shortly afterward, in November 2015, the group was asked to perform on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” to commemorate the 25th anniversary of its debut album. It was the group’s first television appearance in 15 years, and everyone agreed. “It felt right,” Q-Tip said. “The energy was right. It felt like we was those kids that had that big show in Paris when they were 19. It felt fresh. It felt exciting. It felt new. Plus, it was just good to be with my brothers after all of that time.”

Mr. White said the group easily slipped back into the zone: “It was like, oh man, this is the feeling that we’ve all been missing!” That was the night when Q-Tip finally said: “Let’s just do an album! Let’s just start tomorrow!”

But just because you put out the bat signal doesn’t mean everyone can come running. Q-Tip and Mr. White were ready to work on a new album but Mr. Muhammad was in Los Angeles working as the music supervisor for Netflix’s “Luke Cage.” And Phife was in Oakland, recording his own music and dealing with his health problems.

Jarobi White, left, and Q-Tip at Q-Tip’s home recording studio in New Jersey. Credit: Chad Batka for The New York Times​

Since 1990, Phife had been dutifully managing life with Type 2 diabetes. He was receiving dialysis three times a week and eating right. “He wasn’t in any pain,” his wife, Deisha Taylor, said in a recent interview from the home she and Phife shared. “He hadn’t been in the hospital in years. He was in a really, really, really good place before he transitioned.”

Phife was working on his craft every day — he finished a solo album that Ms. Taylor said should come out next year. (The single “Nutshell” is out now.) And while he was ready as a musician to work on a new Tribe album, his relationship with Q-Tip needed work. “I went through a lot of internal and family persecution around the group,” Q-Tip said. “A lot of people faulted me for breaking it up.”

So Phife flew out to Q-Tip’s home, and they sat and talked for hours.

“He came here, and we was bonding,” Q-Tip said. “We went through all of the stuff and apologized, and it was just so good, man. We were so back.” Ms. Taylor said Phife was encouraged by the meeting: “They were developing that chemistry again. He was excited about that.”

Phife found a clinic in New Jersey where he could receive dialysis, and in December 2015, just weeks after the triumphant Fallon performance, he began flying between Oakland and New Jersey twice a month and staying at Q-Tip’s house for weeks at a time to work on the album. The music was inspiring, but Q-Tip believes Phife was primarily focused on repairing their relationship.

From left, Jarobi White, Q-Tip, Phife Dawg and Ali Shaheed Muhammad in New York in 1990.Credit: Al Pereira/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty Images​

“I really believe he did the traveling back and forth, not for this record, but to make sure that me and him, Malik and Jon, were O.K.,” Q-Tip said, using the names they had as children to emphasize the length and depth of their relationship. “Not Ali. Not Jarobi,” he said, choking up. “He came to my house to make sure that he and I were O.K.” In the months of working on the new album, they realized they were more than O.K. Phife even talked about maybe moving to New Jersey to a place near Q-Tip’s. The old friends were still tight.

All of the recording sessions for “We Got It From Here, Thank You for Your Service” took place at Q-Tip’s studio, which Busta Rhymes called “phenomenal.” Soft design touches like bamboo floors and pink mood lights contribute to the warm aesthetic. But a vibe also flows from the history in the room. The main recording board has captured the music of Blondie, the Ramones and Art Blakey. There’s a tape reel that was used by Frank Zappa and equipment from the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix.

Q-Tip had one major rule for the album: He insisted that everyone who was a part of it come work in the studio. “If you wrote your rhyme somewhere else, you still had to come back and lay your verse in Q-Tip’s house,” Busta Rhymes said. “So we pretty much did every song together. Everybody wrote his stuff in front of everybody. Everybody spat their rhymes in front of each other. We were throwing ideas around together.”

When Jack White came to the studio, things fell right into place. “We recorded so many tracks and ideas,” he said. “It’s one of those scenarios where we’re so excited to finally get to work together that it was exploding in a whole different direction. We really didn’t know what we were doing, it was just a ‘hurry up and press record’ kind of moment.” (Q-Tip and Jack White connected when he asked to do an old Tribe song called “Excursions” in his stage show. They learned they were mutual admirers of each other’s work.) Jack White came to the studio without his own gear. “He just took a guitar off the wall and plugged it in and just got his wizard on,” Q-Tip said.

It was thrilling to the guys to watch stars like Jack White, Mr. Lamar and André 3000 come through and record. It was even more exciting to have their brother Phife around all the time. But now some of the group members think that all that traveling may have contributed to grinding him down, physically. “Doing this album killed him,” Jarobi White said simply. “And he was very happy to go out like that.”

In the months since Phife died, Q-Tip has worked to finish what he called “the final Tribe album.” Its title is the one Phife wanted. What does it mean? “I don’t know,” Q-Tip said. “We’re just going with it because he liked it.”

Q-Tip said it was tough to finish the album. From April until late October, he recorded and tweaked his way to the end, but one part was never easy. “It’s so hard for me to sit in there and hear his voice,” Q-Tip said. “Sometimes I just have to like take a break and walk away. It gets heavy. It doesn’t necessarily get sad, it just gets heavy. I literally feel the energy from him when I hear his voice.”

Q-Tip, Jarobi White, Mr. Muhammad and everyone in the Tribe family are still in mourning. The wound is fresh. “I’m gonna be missing him for a while,” Q-Tip said, with an audible lump in his throat. He paused. “God is in control,” he said. “And I feel at peace. I feel hopeful. I feel Phife with me.”

Credit: Chad Batka for The New York Times​

 

Nov 11, 2016

Oh man, get The Low End Theory NOW! haha. People talk about Midnight Marauders being a classic (it is) but I enjoy The Low End Theory more. Both are excellent!

 

Nov 11, 2016

Anyone need a link just like this post and or PM me.

 

Nov 10, 2016

BANNER UPDATED!!

 

Nov 9, 2016

https://theringer.com/all-the-bests-from-a-tribe-called-quest-eaf513abf52f#.ttc2eux8u

Another must-read @Fire Squad, @Rick James, @Jakey, @Eazy, @Worm, @rapmusik, @Translucent, @tpk, @BigCountry, @I FEEL LIKE KOBE, @PYT, @Vitaqua, @Tha Story, @Tone Riggz, @kanyesucksdealwithit, @Simon023, @Lord flacko, @Royston Drenthe, @Groovy Tony

The Syllabus
A Tribe Called’s Bests
From best sitar to best album to best album that never was, the staff (and Michael Rapaport) chimes in on everything great about ATCQ

The Ringer
Saved by the bell.
8 hrs ago


​

On the occasion of A Tribe Called Quest returning from an 18-year hiatus to release their sixth studio album —  We Got It from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service, out on Friday — Ringer staffers have put together a list of our favorite songs, videos, and memories from the group’s storied career. Michael Rapaport, director of the essential Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest documentary, joined us in reminiscing.

Of course, our collection of superlatives is limited in the way that any “best of” list on artists of this magnitude will inevitably fall short; pretty much every Tribe song — each verse, even — merits its own individual tribute. That said, our aim is to celebrate the work of a group whose profound influence has never waned. R.I.P. Phife.

Best Use of a Sitar: “Bonita Applebum” (1990)
Sam Schube: Q-Tip opens “Bonita Applebum” with a question for the object of his affections. “Do I love you?” he asks. “Do I lust for you? Am I a sinner because I do the two?” It’s a great question. A smart question. It’s sensitive, probing, a little too clever — exactly the kind of question that made the debut album on which it appears, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, such a reflexive, self-aware breath of fresh air. But while Tip spends the next three-and-change minutes trying to provide an answer, a sitar butts in — and answers for him. Four notes, one hellaciously bent: It tells you everything you need to know. Because — g.d. — that is one lusty sitar line. It’s mean. It’s salty. It’s funky. It’s Bonita making fun of you, and then cracking a smile as she turns away to walk down the hall. Are you a sinner, Tip? Probably not. But that sitar — that sitar definitely is.

Best Low-Key NYC Hood Song: “Footprints” (1990)
Michael Rapaport: “Footprints” is a classic New York song. The sample, the break … like that’s a song that in New York, specifically, that stick-up kids liked and sort of brought a street cred to Tribe that the other songs didn’t. Because when “Footprints” goes into the break, that used to be like a signal to start tearing s--- up. I remember having a conversation with the late, great Sean Price, and he told me that was his favorite Tribe song and he mentioned it in terms of that time with all the hoodlums in New York. “Footprints” is a low-key hood song.

Best Precursor to ‘Atlanta’: “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo” (1990)
Donnie Kwak: The first time I ever saw A Tribe Called Quest in the flesh was in their very first music video — the experience back then was what I imagine a lot of people felt when they first saw Donald Glover’s Atlanta. Like: Here are some wildly original, talented characters I’ve never seen on TV before that I can sense, almost immediately, that I will want to spend a lot of time with. And so it was.

Best Phife Verse: “Buggin’ Out” (1991)​

​

Sean Fennessey: “Yo.” It’s the first word we hear from Phife Dawg on The Low End Theory. It’s a great “Yo.” In many ways, the definitive “Yo.” Not a yell or a threat or a come hither. Just a simple two-letter note: “Pay attention, captivation imminent.” It’s right on the beat, hard on that snare from Lonnie Smith’s cover of “Spinning Wheel.” It’s just a “Yo,” but it’s the only “Yo.” From there, Phife unfurls a verse that is unflashy but familiar, the modest stunting of your most confident pal. “I float like gravity, never had a cavity.” Could you imagine such a simple boast today, so groundbound and small?

We remember “the 5-foot assassin with the roughneck business.” It’s the first Phife lyric that struck me when news of his death found me in March. Has there ever been a clearer self-identification in rap history? But think of the little markers of Phife’s real life, the details that comprised him: “I sport New Balance”; “Drink a lot of soda so they call me Dr. Pepper”: “Mess around with this you catch a size eight up your (a---).” “Buggin’ Out” is Phife in miniature, 45 seconds of perfection.

Best Beat: “Check the Rhime” (1991)
Justin Charity: Q-Tip hasn’t just make a ton of fantastic beats; he patented a sound that bent jazz to hip-hop’s will. “Check the Rhime” is a perpetually fresh slice of that sound, and it’s one of life’s simpler joys: an iconic groove, with bass and drums that snap like fresh rubber bands. It blows my mind how sparse this beat is, a simplicity underscored every time the bass line cuts out to reveal a lone cross stick marking time. “Check the Rhime,” “Scenario,” and “Buggin’ Out” are all defined by their rich bass patterns, but “Check the Rhime” is the sharpest, clearest bounce — I mean totally spotless, spiffy like Mr. Clean, from that sax circus at the break through the very last pluck. Why does this song even end?

Best Music Video: “Check the Rhime” (1991)​

​

Michael Rapaport: Right now it’d sort of be a simple video, but then, with them on the rooftop of the cleaners, Phife with the Seton Hall jersey and Kadeem Hardison and Large Professor on the roof — that’s their best video. With a song that’s as good as any hip-hop song or pop song in the last 50 years. f---ing perfect. Perfect song, perfect video. Literally f---ing perfection.

Best Live Performance: “Can I Kick It?” on MTV (1991)​

​

Chris Ryan: This was the year of Color Me Badd, C+C Music Factory, and Marky Mark. This is the kind of performance that can change your life. In 1991, MTV broadcast Yo! MTV Rap Unplugged, a kind of crossover between its acoustic live performance program and its delightful rap-and-chat show. Tribe triggered their samples to sound like a pickup band in some smoky club. This is what that band would look like. The improvisatory flourishes are what get me: the little guitar stabs, the jazzy drumming, the piano figures. But Tip, Phife, and Ali are the real improvisers on this stage. Watch how they take their signature song, arrive at the “Tribe flies high like a dove,” and let the lyric take off into staccato cadences and slapdash harmony. The band follows their lead. So did everyone else.

Best Remix: “Scenario” Remix (1992)
Michael Rapaport: Tribe is one of the only groups that made a remix of a classic that might be better than the classic. The “Scenario” remix might be better than “Scenario.” Some groups have taken songs that were good and the remix was better, but here, the remix was better than the already classic original.
​

​

Best Album: ‘Midnight Marauders’ (1993)
Rob Harvilla: Prefer The Low End Theory? You’re fine. Prefer one of the other three? Oooh, congrats on being an iconoclast. For the rest of us — the righteous, the wise, the eternally awed — there is Midnight Marauders, streetwise and celestial, high-minded but sweetly lowbrow. It’s the best one. Don’t overthink it.

It’s the sunny, triumphant road-trip classic “Award Tour” and the sumptuous, bleary-eyed “Midnight.” It’s the nimble bass line anchoring the gritty “Sucka n-----,” with the fiery Q-Tip verse so vivid you don’t mind that he immediately repeats it. It’s Phife Dawg’s winsomely grouchy litany of complaints on “8 Million Stories” (“And to top it off, Starks got ejected”), and the uncouth relief he finds on the gorgeously prurient “Electric Relaxation.” (“Bust off on your couch / Now you got Seaman’s furniture.”) It’s the playful Phife-and-Tip interplay on “The Chase, Part II” (“d---, Phife, ya got fat!”) or the deftly thunderous “Oh My God,” which one Ringer staffer remembers vividly, the first time he heard that beat drop. He was in an unglamorous Toyota hatchback. Any vessel is heavenly, if you know what to fill it with. Don’t underthink it.

Best Song to Wake Up To: “Steve Biko (Stir It Up)” (1993)
Rodger Sherman: I like to wake up to songs I actually like. Every iPhone sound is the most annoying set of noises possible, which is good for actually causing your brain to become awake, but provides a crappy start to consciousness.

No song I’ve chosen has ever been more effective than “Steve Biko (Stir It Up).” Every day, that obnoxiously loud trumpet sample — DA DA-NA-NAAAAAAAAA — would blare in my ear, encouraging me to start my day with a furious dopeness.

There’s no inessential moment on Midnight Marauders. “Steve Biko” is the perfect intro: a warning that for the next 51 minutes, your life was about to be stirred up.

Best Sample: Freddie Hubbard, “Red Clay” (“Sucka n-----,” 1993)
Chris Almeida: “Red Clay” is the framework for a perfect song.

​

The title track from Hubbard’s 1970 album is hard bop, stopping immediately before the point of diminishing returns. If one were to make a completely ahistorical guess about what created the hard bop subgenre, it would be reasonable to believe that a group of musicians decided that bebop was tooaccessible. Hard bop often gets a bit … busy, especially for those without a particular interest in jazz. “Red Clay,” though, is built for accessibility. It is perfect parts escalation and anticipation; a “groove” if there ever was one. Give the changes to a rhythm section, and they can accommodate any number of tempos, rhythmic feels, or solo instruments, from Hubbard’s trumpet to Q-Tip’s vocals. “Sucka n-----” chops up Jack Wilkins’s recording of the song, speeds it up, and pulls the ride cymbal in favor of a stronger kick drum and hi-hat. Even without Ron Carter on the bass, Tribe’s “Red Clay” treatment is, of course, perfect. Not that the song needed any help.

Best Q-Tip Verse: “Sucka n-----” (1993)
Michael Rapaport: I think this song should be in the Smithsonian. Not just for what he’s saying — because obviously what he’s saying is so socially conscious — but the rhyme pattern, the flow, the beat. To me the song is perfection, amongst a bunch of other times that they really had all guns going. It’s perfection on so many levels because from an MC’s perspective, it’s great, and as a socially conscious song, it’s timeless. Then, as a constructed rhyme, it’s great. It’s a stroke of pure brilliance.

Best Misinterpretation of the “Electric Relaxation” (1993) Hook: “Relax yourself, girl, peace out Premier”
Donnie Kwak: Careful enunciation and precise diction were once qualities to admire in an MC; in those days, when a lyric was misheard, fans would argue incessantly over their own interpretations rather than simply chalk it up to a rapper’s mumble-mouth style (or, duh, look it up on Genius).

The hook for “Electric Relaxation” may be the most debated lyric of its era. We could all agree, at least, that there were nine syllables within it. It was the last four that proved troublesome, and somehow “peace out, Premier” was how they were most popularly misheard. Anyone who grew up with the song should long have learned the correct words; I’ll let uninitiated millennials have a listen now and figure it out for themselves.

Best Post–‘Midnight Marauders’ Song: “Find a Way” (1998)

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Justin Sayles: A Tribe Called Quest fans have a conflicted, if not downright adversarial, relationship with the group’s post–Midnight Marauders output. While 1996’s Beats, Rhymes and Life received glowing reviews upon its release, diehards saw the album in a different light: a claustrophobic, paranoid work that bore little resemblance to the three classics that preceded it, partially due to the inclusion of the rapper Consequence and a pre–Fantastic, Vol. 2 J Dilla. That album’s follow-up, 1998’s The Love Movement, shed the negative overtones of its predecessor, but doubled down on Dilla’s production influence, resulting in a distant, minor affair. Eighteen years later, TLM plays like the work of a bored group already looking to future endeavors, but it does contain the last great, joyous ATCQ song: the album’s first single, “Find a Way.”

Built on a sampled Bebel Gilberto lyric and a thumping bass line, the euphoric “Find a Way” stands out on an album featuring awkward pirate appropriations and peak “What What”–era N.O.R.E. cameos. The song recaptures ATCQ’s playful spirit by following Q-Tip and Phife as they interpret mixed signals from love interests. “Should I just sit out or come harder?” they ask on the chorus, before ratcheting up the thirst and literally panting like a dog during the verses. It’s cut from the same cloth as the group’s previous love anthems, including “Bonita Applebum,” which my Ringer colleague Shea Serrano called the first rap love song to “step away from the loverman style” in his excellent The Rap Year Book. “Find a Way” likely isn’t the best-crafted post–Midnight Marauders song the group recorded — that honor probably belongs to the aspirational “Peace, Prosperity & Paper” from the High School High soundtrack — but it’s how we should remember Tribe: as rap everydudes who, after all the award tours and gold plaques, could still respectfully spit game and do so in a relatable, enjoyable way.

Best “Oh s---” Moment While Making the ‘Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest’Documentary, Part I
Michael Rapaport: It was the first interview I did with Phife. It’s in what I call the Blue Room — he would call it his Carolina Room because it was Carolina blue. Phife literally was the biggest sports fan I ever met. There was no interview where he didn’t start listing off his favorite point guards or his favorite running backs or his favorite teams. It always somehow got to that. The first interview I did in the Blue Room where he was so open and honest and vulnerable about what was going on with his health makes me even have emotion right now. When he was doing it, it sort of knocked us … it stopped us in our tracks. Because I didn’t know Phife that well at the time and him being so honest and open and sharing what was going on as soon as we started was something I’ll never forget. It changed the course of what I thought the movie was going to be, because when we started making the movie I thought it was just going to be an overview of them as musicians and then I realized there was this whole other dynamic and element that was going on with him personally.

Best Post–ATCQ Video: Q-Tip, “Vivrant Thing” (2008)
Shea Serrano: I don’t mean the Hype Williams official video for “Vivrant Thing.” To be sure, that one was a tremendous amount of fun and also part of an especially impressive and influential run for Williams, yes. It was beautiful and perfect and Hype’s ability to bend light and angles into circles was a wonderful pairing to the way Q-Tip’s words feel less like sentences and more like clouds or nebulas, yes. But still. I’m not talking about that one. I’m talking about the one that bubbled up onto the internet earlier this year from a show at a House of Blues in Las Vegas in 2008.

Q-Tip was performing “Vivrant Thing” and things were normal and even kind of boring, then all of a sudden things were super-not-normal and also super-not-boring. Here’s the video:

​

For the first 53 seconds, it’s mostly whatever. It’s a concert at House of Blues, it is what it is. But then at 54 seconds DJ Scratch shouts, “Ohhhhh!” and points to the side of the stage and then the camera moves over … and … IT’S … f---ing … PRINCE. He just walked out on stage, took the guitar from the guitar player, then started playing. Three things about the video are neat, and one thing from the video is substantial.

The three fun things: (1) that Q-Tip somehow never flinched or hiccuped or stopped rapping for even a second as Prince arrived, and that’s incredible because, per Scratch, nobody even knew that Prince was there, let alone that he was going to go on stage; (2) there’s a tiny moment when, once Prince gets the guitar, he drops down a little into his playing stance and it’s like a beam of light shoots out of him up to the sun; (3) that when Prince decided he was done, which came during the middle of the song, he just f---ing took the guitar off and left. He didn’t say a word to anyone. Scratch, who told Miss Info about the surprise cameo, had a great line about it: “None of us knew he was there until he popped up on the stage … then the n — -a vanished like Batman, LOL!”

And the one substantial thing: I can’t think of a single thing more telling of the respect and admiration that A Tribe Called Quest garnered than Prince deciding to get on stage for a minute during a House of Blues concert in Las Vegas to play guitar during a song by one of its members.

Best Lost Project: The Collab Album With OutKast
Victor Luckerson: Somewhere in the multiverse, there’s an alternate reality in which OutKast and A Tribe Called Quest actually completed their planned collaborative album, and I would abandon all of you right now to live there. The project, which the groups had kicked around over the past couple of years, was revealed by André 3000 at a remembrance for Phife Dawg in April, eliciting moans of “ughhhhnooowhyyyy” from rap fans everywhere. It’s almost too perfect a match: The everyday tales of urban life that André and Big Boi spun in their early work owe a clear debt to Phife and Q-Tip, and the sonic experimentation on an LP like Midnight Marauders feels like a blueprint for the genre-bending that would ultimately turn ’Kast into legends.

What would it have sounded like to hear hip-hop’s greatest descendants of jazz and funk going back and forth over an entire album? Would the LP be narrated by Peaches from Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik or the robot from Midnight Marauders (or a robotic Peaches)? Would the CD art have illustrations of not one, but two naked women? Would Big Boi and Phife have made a new anthem for Atlanta sports? Would 3000 and Tip have sung a duet?!

Sometimes, it really sucks living in the Darkest Timeline.

Best “Oh s---” Moment While Making the ‘Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest’Documentary, Part II
Michael Rapaport: The first time I interviewed Q-Tip in his house when he, spur of the moment, reconstructed the “Can I Kick It?” beat in front of us. Gave me f---ing goose bumps. I remember saying to the cameraman like, “Yo, can you f---ing believe this?” Like I mouthed that: “Can you f---ing believe this?”

In that scene, the way Tip physically handles the record, he treats it like his baby. Like, he loves records. He loves everything about them: the artwork, the liner notes, the whole f---ing thing. You hear it in Tribe’s music. You hear it in the samples. You hear it in the craftsmanship. It’s one of the reasons I feel like they didn’t make so much music is because I think it was precious to them as a group and particularly Q-Tip. The music was precious to him.

 

Nov 4, 2016

Despite prior confusion, THIS is the album cover:

 

Nov 12, 2016

Full album credits:

1. “Space Program”

Written by Kamaal Fareed, Malik Izaak Taylor and Jarobi White
Published by U Betta Like My Muzik (ASCAP)/Songs of SMP / Jazz Merchant Music (ASCAP)/Universal Music- ZTunes, LLC / Alaric Publishing House (ASCAP)
Vocals by Q-Tip, Phife and Jarobi
Keyboards by Q-Tip and Masayuki “BIGYUKI” Hirano
Drums by Q-Tip
Bass by Louis Cato
Guitar by Chris Sholar

2. “We the People”

Written by Kamaal Fareed, Malik Izaak Taylor, Terrance Butler, Anthony Frank Iommi, John Osbourne and William Ward
Published by U Betta Like My Muzik (ASCAP)/Songs of SMP / Jazz Merchant Music (ASCAP)/Universal Music- ZTunes, LLC / Essex Music International, Inc. (ASCAP/PRS)
Vocals by Q-Tip and Phife
Bass by Q-Tip
Keyboards by Q-Tip and Casey Benjamin
Drum Programming by Q-Tip
Contains a sample of Black Sabbath’s “Behind The Wall Of Sleep”

3. “Whateva Will Be”

Written by Kamaal Fareed, Malik Izaak Taylor, Jarobi White, Dexter Mills and Winston Jones
Published by U Betta Like My Muzik (ASCAP)/Songs of SMP / Jazz Merchant Music (ASCAP)/Universal Music- ZTunes, LLC / Alaric Publishing House (ASCAP) / Songs by Cons Publishing (BMI) / Winston Jones Publishing
Vocals by Q-Tip, Phife, Jarobi and Consequence
Drums by Q-Tip
Consequence appears courtesy of Company of Greatness
Contains samples of Nairobi Sisters’ “Promised Land”

4. “Solid Wall of Sound”

Written by Kamaal Fareed, Malik Izaak Taylor, Trevor Smith and Jack White
Published by U Betta Like My Muzik (ASCAP)/Songs of SMP / Jazz Merchant Music (ASCAP)/Universal Music- ZTunes, LLC / Tziah Music/Songs of Kobalt Music Publishing (BMI) / Peppermint Stripe Music (BMI)
Vocals by Q-Tip, Phife, Busta Rhymes, Jack White and Elton John
Drums by Q-Tip
Bass by Q-Tip
Keyboards by Masayuki “BIGYUKI” Hirano
Piano by Elton John
Acoustic Guitar by Jack White
Jack White appears courtesy of Third Man Records
Elton John appears courtesy of Mercury Records Limited

5. “Dis Generation”

Written by Kamaal Fareed, Malik Izaak Taylor, Jarobi White, Trevor Smith, Headley Bennett, Huford Brown, Lloyd Ferguson, Robert Lyn, Jackie Mittoo, Leroy Sibblis, Fitzroy Simpson, Holgar Czukay, Michael Karoli, Jaki Liebezeit, Irmin Schmidt and Damo Suzuki
Published by U Betta Like My Muzik (ASCAP)/Songs of SMP / Jazz Merchant Music (ASCAP)/Universal Music- ZTunes, LLC / Alaric Publishing House (ASCAP) / Tziah Music/Songs of Kobalt Music Publishing (BMI) / Edward Kassner Associated Publishers Ltd./Downtown Music Publishing (ASCAP) / Music Sales Corporation (ASCAP) / Spoon Music (GEMA)
Vocals by Q-Tip, Phife, Jarobi and Busta Rhymes
Additional Phife Vocals Recorded by Michael Starita at Fantasy Studios, Berkeley, CA
Assistant Engineers at Fantasy Studios: Laura Gonzalez and Robert Kirby
Keyboards by Q-Tip
Drum Programming by Q-Tip
Contains samples of Musical Youth’s “Pass the Dutchie” and Can’s “Halleluhwah”

6. “Kids...”

Written by Kamaal Fareed and André Lauren Benjamin
Published by U Betta Like My Muzik (ASCAP)/Songs of SMP / BMG Monarch (ASCAP)/Gnat Booty Music (ASCAP)
Vocals by Q-Tip and André 3000
Drums by Q-Tip
Bass by Q-Tip
Keyboards by Casey Benjamin and Masayuki “BIGYUKI” Hirano

7. “Melatonin”

Written by Kamaal Fareed, Marsha Ambrosius, Hirano Masayuki and Louis Cato
Published by U Betta Like My Muzik (ASCAP)/Songs of SMP / BMG Chrysalis Music (BMI) / Hirano Masayuki (ASCAP) / Louis Cato (ASCAP)
Vocals by Q-Tip, Marsha Ambrosius and Abbey Smith
Drums by Q-Tip
Additional Drums by Mark Colenburg
Bass by Thaddaeus Tribbett
Additional Bass by Louis Cato
Fender Rhodes by Casey Benjamin
Synthesizer by Masayuki “BIGYUKI” Hirano
Drum Programming by Q-Tip
Guitar by Chris Sholar

8. “Enough!!”

Written by Kamaal Fareed
Published by U Betta Like My Muzik (ASCAP)/Songs of SMP
Vocals by Q-Tip
Bass by Q-Tip
Keyboards by Masayuki “BIGYUKI” Hirano
Scratches by George “DJ Scratch” Spivey

9. “Mobius”

Written by Kamaal Fareed, Trevor Smith, Dexter Mills, Kerry Minnear, Derek Shulman, Philip Shulman and Raymond Shulman
Published by U Betta Like My Muzik (ASCAP)/Songs of SMP / Tziah Music/Songs of Kobalt Music Publishing (BMI) / Songs by Cons Publishing (BMI) / BMG Blue (PRS)/BMG Rights Management US LLC (BMI)
Vocals by Q-Tip, Busta Rhymes and Consequence
Bass by Q-Tip
Piano by Masayuki “BIGYUKI” Hirano
Organ by Casey Benjamin
Guitar by Blair Wells
Acoustic Guitar by Chris Sholar
Consequence appears courtesy of Company of Greatness
Contains a portion of the composition “Prologue,” written by Kerry Minnear, Derek Shulman, Philip Shulman and Raymond Shulman

10. Black Spasmodic

Written by Kamaal Fareed and Malik Izaak Taylor
Published by U Betta Like My Muzik (ASCAP)/Songs of SMP / Jazz Merchant Music (ASCAP)/Universal Music- ZTunes, LLC
Vocals by Q-Tip and Phife
Bass by Q-Tip

11. The Killing Season

Written by Kamaal Fareed, Jarobi White, Dexter Mills and Talib Kweli Greene
Published by U Betta Like My Muzik (ASCAP)/Songs of SMP / Alaric Publishing House (ASCAP) / Songs by Cons Publishing (BMI) / Pen Skills Music/Songs Of Windswept Pacific (BMI)
Vocals by Q-Tip, Jarobi, Consequence, Talib Kweli and Kanye West
Bass by Q-Tip
Keyboards by Masayuki “BIGYUKI” Hirano and Q-Tip
Guitar by Louis Cato
Consequence appears courtesy of Company of Greatness
Kanye West appears courtesy of Getting Out Our Dreams, Inc./Def Jam Recordings, a division of UMG Recordings, Inc.

12. “Lost Somebody”

Written by Kamaal Fareed, Jarobi White, Holgar Czukay, Michael Karoli, Jaki Liebezeit, Irmin Schmidt and Damo Suzuki
Published by U Betta Like My Muzik (ASCAP)/Songs of SMP / Alaric Publishing House (ASCAP) / Spoon Music (GEMA)
Vocals by Q-Tip, Jarobi and Katia Cadet
Bass by Q-Tip
Piano by Chris Bower
Guitar by Chris Sholar
Guitar by Chris Parks
Contains a sample of Can’s “Halleluhwah”

13. “Movin’ Backwards”

Written by Kamaal Fareed and Brandon Paak Anderson
Published by U Betta Like My Muzik (ASCAP)/Songs of SMP / Watch and Learn Publishing (BMI)
Vocals by Q-Tip and Anderson .Paak
Drums by Q-Tip
Bass by Q-Tip
Keyboards by Casey Benjamin
Guitar by Chris Sholar
Anderson .Paak appears courtesy of Aftermath Records

14. “Conrad Tokyo”

Written by Kamaal Fareed, Malik Izaak Taylor and Kendrick Lamar Duckworth
Published by U Betta Like My Muzik (ASCAP)/Songs of SMP / Jazz Merchant Music (ASCAP)/Universal Music- ZTunes, LLC / WB Music Corp. (ASCAP)/Hard Working Black Folks Inc. (ASCAP) and Top Dawg Music (ASCAP) all rights o/b/o itself, Hard Working Black Folks Inc. and Top Dawg Music admin. by WB Music Corp.
Vocals by Phife and Kendrick Lamar
Drum Programming by Q-Tip

15. “Ego”

Written by Kamaal Fareed and Jack White
Published by U Betta Like My Muzik (ASCAP)/Songs of SMP / Peppermint Stripe Music (BMI)
Vocals by Q-Tip
Bass by Q-Tip and Louis Cato
Guitar by Jack White and Chris Sholar
Piano by Casey Benjamin
Scratches by George “DJ Scratch” Spivey

16. “The Donald”

Written by Kamaal Fareed
Published by U Betta Like My Muzik (ASCAP)/Songs of SMP
Vocals by Q-Tip, Phife and Busta Rhymes and Katia Cadet
Bass by Q-Tip
Guitar by Jack White and Louis Cato
Keyboards by Masayuki “BIGYUKI” Hirano
Scratches by George “DJ Scratch” Spivey

Executive Produced by ATCQ

Produced by Q-Tip
Co-Produced by Blair Wells
Recorded by Blair Wells and Q-Tip at the AbLab, NJ
Assistant Engineering: Gloria Kaba
Mixed by Q-Tip and Blair Wells at the AbLab, NJ except “The Space Program”, “We The People….”, “Solid Wall of Sound”, “Kids…”, “Melatonin”, “Enough!!” and “Lost Somebody”
Mixed by Q-Tip, Dave Kennedy and Blair Wells at the AbLab, NJ
Mastered by Vlado Meller at Vlado Meller Mastering
Mastering Assistant: Jeremy Lubsey
A&R: Michael Ostin and Kim Lumpkin
Project Consultation: Tracey Waples
A&R Admin: Bekah Connolly
Business Affairs: Stephanie Yu, Shane St. Hill and Robert Faulstich
Product Manager: Thom Skarzynski
Album Cover Designed by: Richard Prince
Epic Creative Director: Anita Boriboon
Management: Michael Ostin, Dion Liverpool, Monica Talavera, Kim Lumpkin
ATCQ Legal Representation: Julian K. Petty and Carron J. Mitchell for Nixon Peabody LLP
ATCQ Business Management: Kyle Tessiero for NKSFB, LLC.

 

Nov 3, 2016

That piece brought me to tears, I know exactly what Q-Tip was going through with Phife. I can't wait to hear this, I have a feeling this will be special.

 

Aug 20, 2016

ATCQ album in 2016...without Phife

 

Nov 16, 2016

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/7580400/a-tribe-called-quest-number-1-album

A Tribe Called Quest Heading for First No. 1 Album in Over 20 Years

11/15/2016 by Keith Caulfield


Will Heath/NBC: Q-Tip and Jarobi White of A Tribe Called Quest perform on Saturday Night Live on Nov. 12, 2016.

Hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest is heading for its first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart in more than 20 years, according to industry forecasters. The act’s new release, We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service, is on course to earn around 120,000 equivalent album units in the week ending Nov. 17, according to prognosticators, and will likely arrive atop the Billboard 200.

The new effort, which is billed as the group’s final album, is their first studio release since 1998’s The Love Movement, and the first since the death of the act’s Phife Dawg in March.

The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The top 10 of the new Dec. 3-dated Billboard 200 chart -- where A Tribe Called Quest may debut at No. 1 -- is scheduled to be revealed on Billboard’s websites on Sunday, Nov. 20.

A Tribe Called Quest has topped the Billboard 200 chart once previously, with Beats, Rhymes and Life, which debuted at No. 1 on the list dated Aug. 17, 1996. The act made its Billboard 200 debut with their 1990 debut effort People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, which peaked at No. 91 and featured the hit single “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo.”

Elsewhere in the upcoming Billboard 200 chart’s top 10, it’s expected that Stingcould notch his 11th top 10-charting effort with his new 57th & 9th album. It’s his first pop/rock album in more than a decade, and would also mark his first top 10 set since 2010’s Symphonicities reached No. 6.

 

Nov 12, 2016

For anybody in the Tri-State area, there's ATCQ popup shop at 393 Broadway in Manhattan. They're selling Tribe merch. I'm not sure if they have copies of the album, trying to find that out now. It opened Friday and is going on through the weekend. I would have gone yesterday but I found out about too late (even worse is the fact that I was in that area and didn't know about it).

 

Nov 11, 2016

Your voice would sound different if you were dead too

 

Nov 10, 2016

really exceeds expectations so far

 

Nov 9, 2016

1. "The Space Program"
2. "We The People...."
3. "Whateva Will Be"
4. "Solid Wall of Sound"
5. "Dis Generation"
6. "Kids..."
7. "Melatonin"
8. "Enough"
9. "Mobius"
10. "Black Spasmodic"
11. "The Killing Season"
12. "Lost Somebody"
13. "Movin Backwards"
14. "Conrad Tokoyo"
15. "Ego"
16. "The Donald"

Tracklist is out

 

Oct 28, 2016

Cmon guys at least give this a spin.

The legendary ATCQ and Phife at least deserve that. It's good closure.

 

Nov 21, 2016

The album sold 135,000 in equivalent album units with 112,000 of those in traditional album sales

You know how SPECIAL that is in this day and age? That's REAL support by REAL fans.

 

Nov 18, 2016

$6.99 at Best Buy for a limited time.