A Tribe Called Quest was a Hip-Hop group formed in Queens, New York City in 1985. It is composed of rapper/producer Q-Tip (Kamaal Ibn John Fareed, formerly Jonathan Davis), rapper Phife Dawg (Malik Taylor), and DJ/producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad. A fourth member, rapper Jarobi White, left the group after their first album but rejoined the group in 2006.
The group's members are regarded as iconic pioneers in hip-hop, and they have been credited as one of the first prominent acts in Alternative Hip Hop. They also popularized the practice of mixing hip-hop with jazz, which helped expand the art of the genre's production and became a template for numerous hip-hop and R&B artists in the following decades.
Along with De La Soul, Queen Latifah and the Jungle Brothers, the group was a central part of the Native Tongues Posse, and enjoyed the most commercial success out of all the groups to emerge from that collective. Many of their songs, such as "Bonita Applebum", "Can I Kick It?", "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo", "Scenario", "Check the Rhime", "Jazz (We've Got)", "Award Tour", and "Electric Relaxation", are regarded as classics.
The group released five albums in eight years (the first in 1990, the last in 1998); they were all quite successful, with their first three in particular being hailed as hip-hop milestones. They disbanded in 1998, attributing their split
to record label politics and the changing scene of the hip-hop world, with the popularity of groups shifting to solo rappers.
In 2006, the group reunited, and five years later, a Michael Rapaport-directed documentary about them, Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest, was released. The group played several shows on Kanye West's Yeezus Tour in 2013 and then stepped out of the spotlight before reuniting again on November 13, 2015 on The Tonight Show in wake of the Paris terrorist attacks. Feeling "charged", they subsequently decided to put aside their differences and secretly record a new album.
Tragedy struck on March 22, 2016 when Phife Dawg died due to complications resulting from his diabetes. Nevertheless, in August 2016, L.A Reid, CEO of Epic Records, announced that a new album from the group was coming out. This album, We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, was released on November 11, 2016. The 16-track double album features not only verses from Phife Dawg recorded before his death and Jarobi White rapping for the first time, but features from many rappers and artists from the past and present, including Kendrick Lamar, André 3000, Kanye West, Elton John, Anderson .Paak, Jack White, and Consequence. The remaining members of the group played on Saturday Night Live the day after the album released. The album itself is a tribute and dedicated to Phife Dawg, who picked out its title; while the other members reportedly didn't understand its meaning at the time, they chose to keep it after Phife's death.
According to Q-Tip, We Got It from Here... is the group's final album. However, he also announced plans for a final world tour, to promote the album and honor Phife, before permanently disbanding. They eventually made several festival appearances throughout summer 2017; their final concert was on September 9, 2017 at Bestival in Dorset, England. A short film based on the album's opening track, "The Space Program", was released in March 2018 and billed as the group's final video.
Around the time of the album's release, it was announced that a new Phife Dawg solo album, mostly completed before his death, would be seeing release. While his wife stated that it would be released in early 2017, it eventually came out in 2022 under the title Forever.
Discography:
- People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (1990)
- People's Instinctive Remixes (1991)
- 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)
Notable Songs:
- "Bonita Applebum" from People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm
- "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo" from People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm
- "Can I Kick It" from People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm
- "Check the Rhime" from The Low End Theory
- "Jazz (We've Got)" from The Low End Theory
- "Scenario" from The Low End Theory
- "Hot Sex" from Midnight Marauders
- "Award Tour" from Midnight Marauders
- "Electric Relaxation" from Midnight Marauders
- "Oh My God" from Midnight Marauders
- "1nce Again" from Beats, Rhymes and Life
- "Stresed Out" from Beats, Rhymes and Life
- "Find a Way" from The Love Movement
- "The Space Program" from We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service
- "We the People" from We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service
A Tribe Called Quest provides examples of:
- Alternative Hip Hop: They are one of the better-known acts in this genre.
- The Artifact: Q-Tip's stage name has been this since The Low End Theory. By the time the album was in production, both an increasing personal dislike of the name and trademark issues made him change his stage name to "The Abstract". However, he ultimately kept the "Q-Tip" moniker, if only because that's what everyone knew him as by that point.
- Big Applesauce: Their songs frequently reference New York.
- Book Ends: Their entire recording career may be a worthy example. At the beginning of People's Instinctive Travels... a (newborn?) baby is heard crying, and at the very end of We Got It from Here... the name of a deceased person (Phife Dawg!) is being chanted.
- Control Freak: In the Beats, Rhymes and Life film, Phife, Ali and their old manager say that Q-Tip is/was this.
- Crime of Passion: This is the central crux of the track "Crew", wherein Q-Tip catches his best friend making out with his wife. Despite briefly stewing over whether or not he should resolve the situation peacefully to avoid a jail bid, Tip's emotions get the best of him, and he guns down his now-ex friend in a crime of passion after confronting him.
- Darker and Edgier: The album Beats, Rhymes and Life has a darker sound and lyrical tone than the previous three releases.
- Distracted by the Sexy: The actual cause of Q-Tip leaving his wallet in El Segundo.Ali said "pay for lunch", So I did it
Pulled out the wallet and I saw this wicked beautiful lady
She was a waitress there
Put the wallet down and stared and stared
To put me back into reality, here's Shaheed,
"Yo, Tip, man, you got what you need!"
I checked for keys and started to step
But what do you know, my wallet I forget - Early-Installment Weirdness: Not related to the band was Q-Tip’s contribution to “Groove is in the Heart”. Downplayed as, while different from the usual sound, became a massive radio hit.
- The Golden Age of Hip Hop: They are one of the most acclaimed hiphop artists.
- Grand Finale: We Got It from Here...Thank You 4 Your Service effectively serves as one for the band's career.
- Jazz Rap: Pioneers of the genre; though preceded by Gang Starr, and the Jungle Brothers. Even as their sound got slicker from Beats, Rhymes & Life onward, the jazz influence never left.
- Jerkass: Judging from Beats, Rhymes and Life (The Movie) Q-Tip shifted from Innocently Insensitive to this.
- Insufferable Genius: One definitely gets that vibe from Q-Tip after watching the movie.
- Location Song: "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo", about how the band lost their wallet in this place and need to retrieve it.
- Lyric Swap: In "Check the Rhime" the first two lines of each verse are the same (albeit with Q-tip rapping the first and Phife the second) but afterwords the lyrics are different.
- Mundane Made Awesome: "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo", the best song ever written about a lost wallet.
- Music Is Politics: On the track "Check the Rhime", Q-Tip raps the line “Industry rule #4080/Record company people are shady”, which was supposedly a reference to their label Jive Records.
- N-Word Privileges: "Sucka Nigga" touches upon this in the second verse.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: Thanks to a throwaway Take That! line in "Jazz (We've Got)note that led to him getting jumped by rap/New Jack Swing group Wreckx-N-Effect, Q-Tip was forced to wear a gimp mask to cover up an eye injury in the music video for "Hot Sex".
- Record Producer: Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed almost exclusively produced everything the Tribe put out. The exceptions are their three-year period between 1996-1999 with their production crew "The Ummah",note and We Got from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service featured various guest producers and composers, including Elton John and Kanye West.note
- Rockumentary: Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest.
- Shout-Out: In "Oh My God" from Midnight Marauders, Phife Dawg shouts out Al B. Sure!, TLC, and En Vogue.
- Supergroup: ATCQ as a whole is one of the original three charter members of Native Tongues, alongside De La Soul, and the Jungle Brothers. Tip himself was also a part of the late 90s Soulquarians collective, which included D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, Questlove, James Poyser, Talib Kweli, and fellow Native Tongues Mos Def and J Dilla.
- Take That!: Subverted. "Check the Rhime" seemingly has a dig at MC Hammer, at the end for being a pop sellout with the final lyrics being "Rap is not Pop, if you call it that then STOP". However, Q-Tip was actually defending Hammer's place in hip hop with that couplet, and checking everyone else who was calling Hammer a pop artist. Unfortunately, Hammer took it the wrong way, and dissed the Tribe on "Break 'Em Off Something Propa."
