With final album, A Tribe Called Quest leaves indelible legacy
A Tribe Called Quest's impact on hip hop is immeasurable. Just ask Common.
"They're not only one of my favorite groups, but one of my greatest sources of inspiration," he says. "Midnight Marauders is the reason I'm here as an artist, because hearing that album made me like, 'I have to get better.' Knowing that I needed to get better was just the start of it."
Many other rappers, too, are indebted to the pioneering hip-hop group, whose founding member Phife Dawg (born Malik Taylor) died of complications from diabetes in March at age 45. The remaining members — Q-Tip, Jarobi White and Ali Shaheed Muhammad — will release Tribe's sixth and final album, We Got It From Here … Thank You 4 Your Service, Friday, which they'll follow with a performance on NBC's Saturday Night Live this weekend.
"Just about anyone out here doing it — outside of anything hardcore or overly gangsta — you're a descendant of Tribe, whether you like it or not," says Trent Clark, editor-in-chief of rap news site HipHopDX.com. "Benchmarks, blueprints, they set them all," and paved the way for current leaders in the genre, including Kendrick Lamar, Drake, Vince Staples, and Joey Bada$$.
Founded in New York, Tribe burst onto the scene in 1990 with debut album People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, featuring a stable of instant classics including Bonita Applebum, I Left My Wallet in El Segundo and Can I Kick It?
"They were playful, they were intellectual, they were socially conscious," says Erik Nielson, an associate professor who teaches classes in hip-hop studies at the University of Richmond. "But it wasn't social consciousness that was as urgent as, say, Public Enemy or KRS-One. They celebrated intellectualism in various forms, rather than demanding it and that, in many ways, made them more accessible to a lot of listeners."
But it was their sophomore effort, The Low End Theory, a year later that came to define the group, with its minimal, bass-heavy beats and incorporation of jazz samples. It spawned their now-iconic single Scenario (featuring a breakout verse from Busta Rhymes) and has since been named one of the greatest all-time albums by both Rolling Stone and Time.
Although they weren't the first to do so, Tribe "definitely helped popularize jazz in a hip-hop sound or aesthetic" on Theory, Nielson says. "It wasn't just that they incorporated jazz, but they brought in lots of different types of jazz" and "were responsible, in large part, for opening up those sounds to other artists after them."
By the time their third album, 1993's Marauders, came about, they were "the fully realized version of what we now know as A Tribe Called Quest," says Clark, noting the nimble flow and palpable chemistry between Q-Tip and Phife Dawg on their respective verses. "Q-Tip provided the insight, the melodies, the catchphrases — he set the vibe. And Phife, he left with the quotables. It was really the best of both worlds."
Tribe split shortly before the release of its fifth album, 1998's The Love Movement, but reunited in the mid-2000s for a series of highly successful reunion concerts and festival sets. Their last performance together before Phife's death was on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last November, in celebration of a People's Instinctive Travels 25th anniversary reissue. (They became eligible for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015 but have yet to make it onto the ballot.)
Their new album, We Got It From Here, will feature guest spots from André 3000, Kendrick Lamar and Elton John, as well as contributions recorded by Phife before his death. The long-gestating effort has not yet been unveiled for critics, which has many hip-hop fans wondering where the icons will go, musically speaking, after nearly two decades of silence.
"I'll be curious to hear how a group with a legacy like theirs imagines themselves now," Nielson says. "That's what I'm interested in: To what extent are they continuing a tradition or trying to break with one?"