Week 3: A TRIBE CALLED QUEST (420 to 30: A Music Retrospective)
Right around the time I was busy getting born in 1989, Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad (and Jarobi White) were busy coming together to form A Tribe Called Quest. 5 glorious hip-hop albums later, the group split in 1998, but lo, dreams can come true, and the group came together one more time before Phife’s passing to create 2016’s We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service.
420 to 30: A Music Retrospective
Here's 7 of my favorites from A Tribe Called Quest.
Week 3: A TRIBE CALLED QUEST
#015/420 - A Tribe Called Quest feat. André 3000, “Kids…”
Amazingly, even with 18 years off in between (outside of a few brief reunions), Tribe came back just as good as when they left, maybe even on an upswing from the last if you consider The Love Movement to be the weakest of their original 5.
This song is perhaps the best off of an all around great album and happens to feature André 3000 of OutKast fame who is absolute “Chick-fil-A nuggets, McDonald's french fries, the spicy Popeye’s, and Red Lobster biscuits” on this track.
And somehow Q-Tip in his 40s is as good as Q-Tip in his 20s.
#016/420 - A Tribe Called Quest, “Butter”
A standout track from what is often regarded as their best album, Phife Dog is on the mic and he’s smooth like butter. (Not no Parkay, not no margarine, strictly butter.)
Some great burns in here such as when he refers to women with colored contact lenses, hair extensions, and fake eyelashes as “bionic” ladies.
“If you were you and just you, talk to you, maybe, but I can't stand, no bionic lady.”
A roast in a rap. Genuinely funny at parts and a nice jam emblematic of the era.
And, of course, the source of the great line, “I got more game than Parker Brothers.”
#017/420 - A Tribe Called Quest, “8 Million Stories”
“7 times out of 10 we listen to our music at night. Thus spawned the title of this program. The word maraud means ‘to loot’. In this case, we maraud your ears.”
I love this album beginning to end and how it is conceived and constructed. After our narrator (who identifies herself as the one on the front of our cover) delivers the above line, we’re off to Carvel to get a milkshake. But wouldn’t you know this honey rips us off for all our loot cakes.
Another one of my favorites from Phife Dog, it’s a song about never-ending bad luck and frustration. And just when you think it couldn’t get any worse… “went down on hon, she's in the red zone.” Ouch.
“Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me.” etc. Love that part.
A great track for a midnight session of Midnight Marauders after a crappy day. It always could have been worse. At least Starks won’t be getting ejected again anytime soon.
Speaking of, are there still KB Toys out there?
#018/420 - A Tribe Called Quest feat. D-Life, “Pad & Pen”
A Tribe Called Quest has featured many notable musicians on their albums — Busta Rhymes, Faith Evans, Redman, Kanye West, etc. — but their greatest collaboration (in my opinion) was with someone who may be decidedly less famous, but someone who is, for my money, the greatest hype man on any track ever: Darren “D-Life” Lighty.
It was definitely “a thing” in the late 90s/early 00s to have someone yelling about how great you were in the background of your rap song. Normally, this can be a little much, obnoxious even, but in the case of this song, D-Life just sounds so goddamn fucking excited about everything, I can’t help but love it. At points, he’s just loudly chuckling on beat in the background.
“We got the good shit not the bullshit! Y’know what I mean??? Ha-ha!”
He’s basically at 100 through the entire song. But then, somehow, about 2:38 in, when he’s like, “…HA! …HA! …HA! …HA!” you’re like, whoa that’s even getting a little aggressive yet still. I thought 100 was as high as we could go.
But then by 2:56, it’s like when you realize Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear is actually the villain when he shouts very insistently, “OUR PARTY NEVER ENDS!!!”
And at that point Tribe just steps back and lets D-Life do it the rest of the way, because that’s what you do when someone has that much energy. Why D-Life never reached Nate Dogg levels of fame, I will never know. Someone please bring him back out of obscurity to do another hook.
“Woooooord.”
#019/420 - A Tribe Called Quest, “Vibes and Stuff”
A Tribe Called Quest was chiller than the rest and these are the vibes to prove it.
“I’m prompt with my business and I do things on the double. Yo, I'm out like Buster Douglas. I say peace to MC Trouble. Rest in Peace.”
So many 90s references, so little time. It’ll take you back whether you’ve been there before or not.
“And you know what else? We got the vibes.”
#020/420 - A Tribe Called Quest, “Jazz (We've Got)”
I don’t like to completely leave out their first album or Beats, Rhymes and Life, and I do recommend all Tribe albums to fans of this type of music, but The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders above all really did contain some of their very best work, in my opinion. And this is one of the finest examples.
To me, this song is the sound you get into A Tribe Called Quest over and what makes them stand out against other rappers of the 80s and 90s. “It’s the universal sound, best to brothers underground.” Here Q-Tip even quotes Jim Morrison with, “we have no time to wallow in the mire.” Tribe is definitely one group that rewards you for picking up on their often-incognito pop culture references. Plus, we get a verse from Phife as well.
Blend all that with a cool beat and some sweet jazz trumpets and you’ve got (We’ve Got) one of the very best Tribe songs.
#021/420 - A Tribe Called Quest, “The Chase, Part II”
My favorite from A Tribe Called Quest is not one I hear mentioned alongside their greatest works, not even making it onto their “best of”, but I think this is one of those shining instances where everyone who got together to make a given song fulfilled their role in that process as close to perfection as they ever could have. This is Tribe at their best, in my opinion, and it comes across as almost effortless.
“Damn Phife, you got fat.”
“Yeah, I know it looks pathetic. Ali Shaheed Muhammad got me doing calisthenics.”
There’s something very satisfying about the way Phife Dog delivers the first verse, like his voice is simultaneously being used as percussion. “Gimme the microphone, boy, one time, bam!” sounds like a drumroll that has words to it as he affects an accent and it jumps right into Q-Tip.
Great, complex beat with Biz Markie woven into it elegantly by Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and it makes the perfect cap for any Tribe playlist for its final line.
“This concludes Midnight Marauder program. Press any key to return to the main menu.”
A Tribe Called Quest may have made some of the best beginning-to-end albums in all of hip hop, with Midnight Marauders being a particular highlight for me for its ability to pull off being one of the coolest concept albums from any rappers ever, which I recommend to anyone who is even the slightest bit intrigued.
Next week, I may have called them my favorite band in the 8th grade and years later there is still plenty to like about the surprisingly productive (5 albums since 2010 that I’ve never even listened to?) alternative rock nerds turned dorks, Weezer.
420 to 30: A Music Retrospective
Week 2: The Jackson 5/The Jacksons
View the full list of "420 Songs" here: https://tinyurl.com/y8fboudu (Google spreadsheet link)
This is one artist I will have to listen to, since even though I once copied all of your music onto my hard drive, I have never listened to any of A Tribe Called Quest.
Excellent. Then you may already have the first 5 albums on a drive somewhere and my top recommendations are conveniently laid out above. Also you should listen to "Ham 'n' Eggs" because it's a side of theirs I didn't really get to show in the above but should appeal to your sense of humor: