But when we do see him, he’s listening to “God Lives Through” while visiting Tribe backstage and damn near falling into a reverie about how “this is my favorite song, son… [recently] I was in Vegas, and I just put this shit on, and this shit had me in tears in the car, B.” Busta catching feelings to the Midnight Marauders closer makes all the sense in the world, and not just because that’s his younger-days voice from earlier in the record, shouting the titular hook to “Oh My God” in a rare case of instantly recursive self-referencing samples. Then they revamp their image to stave off a sophomore slump, and while the album garners critical acclaim and the hearts of their core audience, it doesn’t even reach the top 40 of Billboard’s album charts, and the most popular single sees them memorably outdone by some guesting up-and-comers. Humorous and cheeky, you just gotta love Bonita Applebum. You’ve just heard “Excursions,” the opening track that features Tip taking control throughout, pulling off two of his most memorable verses ever and apparently setting the stage for everything to come: the connections between hip-hop and jazz, the Afrocentric perspective given more serious weight, the reassertion of a group that has something to prove after being interrogated over the threats of a sophomore slump. Imagine a band that faces the kind of trajectory usually posited as a hard-luck story, a series of events that goes a little something like this: First, they drop a name-making debut that winds up becoming both one of the most acclaimed, hardest-to-follow first efforts by any group of an entire decade, and the last thing they released featuring major contributions by a core member who came up with some of their strongest ideas. Phife clearly still was in the process of finding his voice but Q-Tip was in top form from day one.eval(ez_write_tag([[336,280],'hiphopgoldenage_com-box-4','ezslot_2',114,'0','0'])); “This is the year that I come in and just devastate / My style is great ask your peoples can I dominate? Magnanimous DJ and co-producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad shared beat-making credits with fellow crate-digging record-scholar/fiend Q-Tip so closely that it’s still often unclear just who contributed what. Tribe’s extended time away post-Midnight Marauders ended with a noticeable metamorphosis into a more extended family, thanks to Jay Dee’s production-team membership and the introduction of Consequence — literal fam, what with him being Q-Tip’s first cousin — as a featured co-star. Am I a sinner ’cause I do the two?”), there are paired promises of vague freakiness (“I like to kiss ya where some brothers won’t”) and honest connection (“I like to tell ya things some brothers don’t”), and we get that priceless compliment that Bonita herself is “like a hip-hop song, y’know?” — a phrase that gets more meta the more you think about it. “Listen up everybody, the bottom line / I’m a black intellect, but unrefined / With precision like a bullet, target bound / Just living like a hooker, the harlot sounds / Now when I say the harlot, you know I mean the hot / Heat of the equator, the broth that’s in the pot…”. Agree? (An all-time great obscure NYC-area reference from Phife Diggy: “Let me hit it from the back, girl, I won’t catch a hernia/Bust off on your couch, now you got Seaman’s Furniture.”) They’re pretty self-aware of it, too, juxtaposing their own rep against loverman artists like H-Town, Bell Biv Devoe, and “Uncle L” L Cool J. Sign up for our newsletter. It can be easy to forget that A Tribe Called Quest pre-Low End Theory were just as off-kilter and playfully goofy as D.A.I.S.Y. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. A Tribe Called Quest (L-R): Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Jarobi White. Only two things keep this, the legendary closing cut off the second of three straight classic Tribe albums, out of the #1 slot. J Dilla‘s touch as part of the Ummah production collective can really be felt here. “Scenario” (from The Low End Theory, 1991) Only two things keep this, the legendary closing cut off … 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. Change WE GOT THE JAZZ for the remix version. But this is where Phife and Tip’s short-bar back-and-forth rapport still feels not just alive but lively, careening between dirty-joke punchlines and spirit-of-’93 vibes that do their best to hide the turmoil that caused this album to be their final statement. In 1991, incorporating jazz was still fairly unusual in hip-hop production; even the first couple LPs by Gang Starr, a group feted for both Guru and DJ Premier’s reverence and ear for the genre’s many phases, were heavier on funk and R&B breaks than fusion or soul jazz. Released on April 11, 1990, as the first single of their debut album People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, I Left My Wallet In El Segundo was the first introduction to A Tribe Called Quest for most of us. ATCQ’s legacy is classic and they will forever be considered part of Hip Hop’s elite. Their third record is a bonafide end-to-end classic, but it just so happens to share a release date with one of the few albums ever recorded in its genre (or any other) to become the kind of certified, dynasty-creating phenomenon that would last decades.
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