A Tribe Called Quest – 1nce Again

R.I.P. Phife Dawg: Revisit pioneering New York rap coiffure'south best tracks

By Christopher R. Weingarten, Mosi Reeves, Keith Harris, Jason Newman and Jon Dolan

A Tribe Called Quest. Photograph by Flickr.

Through 10 years and a handful of critically adored albums, rappers A Tribe Called Quest went from spitting wing routines on Linden Boulevard in Queens to mapping out the electrically relaxed blueprint for wave after wave of abstract alterna-rap bohemians "" laying the footprints for Digable Planets, the Fugees, Mos Def and Talib Kweli, the Blackness Eyed Peas, Lupe Fiasco and even superfan Kanye W. Together, Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Jarobi and Ali Shaheed Muhammad cemented the link between jazz's grooves and hip-hop's futurity funk, provided a bear witness-stealing scenario to launch their friend Busta Rhymes to fame and incubated a young producer named Jay Dee who would influence a generation of beatmakers on his own. A freewheeling trip of Lou Reed licks, tales of lost wallets, featherbrained scratching, Ron Carter bass assists and salty punchlines, their torso of piece of work was like aught hip-hop had seen before, or has since. In remembrance of Phife Dawg, who passed away Tuesday at age 45, here are the pioneering rap group's xx essential tracks.

De La Soul, "Buddy (Native Tongue Conclusion)" feat. Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Jungle Brothers, Queen Latifah, Monie Love (1989)

While Q-Tip had been smoothly making the rounds on Jungle Brothers and De La Soul albums, this all-star posse cut marked the debut appearance of Phife Dawg, combining the talents of both A Tribe Called Quest MCs on ane runway for the beginning time. "We was in the studio and only wanted to invite some people on there," De La Soul's Dave told Brian Coleman inÂBank check the Technique. "The closest people to what we was doing at the fourth dimension was the Jungle Brothers and Tribe. And Latifah was a labelmate on Tommy Boy. Information technology just became a family unit thing." The casual session end up giving shape to the Native Tongues crew, a loose group of hip-hop bohemians that would soon define the aesthetic of Nineties rap'southward experimental, Afrocentric wing.

Jungle Brothers, "Doin' Our Ain Dang" feat. De La Soul, Monie Dearest, A Tribe Chosen Quest, Queen Latifah (1989)

Before Tribe dropped their debut album, every Q-Tip appearance on a Native Tongues rails was an upshot, and his contribution to this partying posse cut was no exception. Tip doesn't jump on the beat like a hungry upstart. Instead, he eases in with his showtime line "" a coolly wistful "A tree is growing" "" then gets faster and fancier every bit he rhymes. He doesn't dominate the track, because that's not what Native Tongues was all about, and in fact, he celebrates his crew rather than himself, catastrophe on a gracious reference to his hosts: "Praise the Lord for the JBs." But not even the great Monie Love, who boogies into her poesy ready for stardom, upstages him here.

"I Left My Wallet in El Segundo" (1990)

Though he dubbed himself "The Abstract," Q-Tip had a natural storyteller'due south gift for concrete lyrical item from the jump. With a loping beat from the Chamber Brothers' "Funky" setting just the correct lazy and comic tone, he precisely describes every aspect of an ill-blighted road trip: the iv-foot-high sombrero that Pedro wears, the '74 Dodge Dart, the meal of enchiladas and fruit punch, the wallet's contents of props numbers and jimmy hats, how to drive from the Chugalug Parkway to the Conduit. Groovy for a kid barely out of his teens rapping most an exotic-sounding place he learned about from its employ as a frequent dial line onÂSanford and Son.

"Bonita Applebum" (1990)

"This is the song that truly birthed the idea of neo-soul," Questlove told Rolling Stone of People's Instinctive'due south second single. "It was the coolest beloved song hip-hop has ever offered united states of america." On the 1990 track, Q-Tip blends the sultry guitars of soul-jazz grouping RAMP's "Daylight" with the vocals and sitar of Rotary Connexion'south "Memory Band" for a track that thumps hard enough for the guys but nods to the bedroom for the girls. "I was obsessed with it," Pharrell says in the ATCQ documentary Beats, Rhymes and Life. "I had never heard nothing like that in my whole life." The song exemplified the group'due south mellow side and turned Q-Tip into a Golden Era sex symbol. Who was Bonita? "Somebody who was refined," Black Thought says in the doc. "But had a fat ass."

"Tin can I Kick Information technology (Spirit Mix)" (1990)

A Tribe Called Quest rode the smooth Herbie Flowers bass line on Lou Reed's 1972 hit "Walk on the Wild Side" to their biggest U.K. hit ever. While the song boosted their profile, it didn't help their banking company accounts nearly as much. Said Phife at a London concert in 2011, "Lou Reed, instead of maxim no altogether, he was similar, 'Yes, overnice! Give me the motherfucking money.' Like Smokey in Friday." Phife later told Rolling Stone, "to this day, we haven't seen a dime from that vocal. Still, it helped put the group on the map, and the call-and-response chorus was so instantly indelible that information technology would terminate upward existence chanted everywhere from Jay Z'due south groundbreaking 1996 debut, Reasonable Doubt, to Robbie Williams' smash unmarried "Rock DJ." The sample-crazed "Spirit Mix" used for the music video raised the funk level to febrile heights.

"If the Papes Come" feat. Afrika Baby Bam (1990)

The quintessential A Tribe Chosen Quest B-side, "If the Papes Come up" was the non-LP companion to "Can I Kick Information technology." Borrowing pieces of Slick Rick, Lou Donaldson and some spaced-out dialogue from Axis: Bold as Love past Jimi Hendrix, this track would have a life far beyond flipside status: Heed and imagine where hits like Digable Planets' "Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)" would exist without it.

"Excursions" (1991)

The opening track of the jazz-flecked The Low Stop Theory was 1 of hip-hop's great statements of purpose, with the crew connecting musical dots between different eras of radical music. Q-Tip took a 6/8 hard-bop lick from Jazz Messengers bassist Mickey Bass and flipped it until it bounced forth in hip-hop's funky 4/four. Tribe sample O.G. hip-hop pioneers the Last Poets "("fourth dimension is running and passing, passing and running") the same way that avowed Tribe fan Kanye W would use Gil-Scott Heron at the cease of My Beautiful Night Twisted Fantasy. In Q-Tip's lyrics, rap is like the bebop that Q-Tip's dad listened to, Bobby Brown is amping like Michael, and the abstract poet is prominent like Shakespeare or Langston Hughes.

"There were a couple of other groups that were sampling jazz at that fourth dimension," Ali Shaheed Muhammad told Nextbop.com. "Gang Starr, Pete Stone and C.L. Shine, Master Source "¦ simply I call back the fashion that we delivered information technology was in such a way that had not really been done." As Q-Tip told Brian Coleman in Bank check the Technique: "At the fourth dimension, there were some things happening in hip-hop, sonically, that I wanted to expand on, especially with the bottom. "¦ I would always explain how dynamic I wanted things to be by telling Bob [Power, engineer], 'I desire this to be more at the bottom, at the depression cease.' I guess it was a lack of articulation but information technology got the task done. And that's where the title came from."

"Cheque the Rhime" (1991)

On the commencement single from ATCQ's seminal The Low End Theory, Q-Tip and Phife Dawg reminisce about their pre-fame days as teenagers spitting in ciphers on Linden Boulevard in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens. A slightly accelerated looped rhythm from Minnie Riperton's "Baby, This Dearest I Have" sets a casual, laid-back mood, with Phife spitting verses as if he were lounging in the afternoon sun, swatting abroad rivals like flies. "A special shout of peace goes out to all my pals, y'all see/And a middle finger goes to all you punk MCs," he raps. It's also an assertion of Phife's primacy as a rapper. Some doubted his talent after his halting verses on People'south Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, only hither, he speedily proves himself Q-Tip's lyrical equal.

"Jazz (We've Got)" (1991)

The lovely absurd-out vibes of "Jazz (We Got)" stem from a tantalizing collaboration between ATCQ and Pete Rock that never came to fruition. One of the potential backing tracks was a Pete Rock organization of Jimmy McGriff's "Green Dolphin Street." "Pete had come up with that beat, but the vocal we were going to do never materialized," Q-Tip told Brian Coleman for the latter's 2005 book Rakim Told Me. "I already had the record he used, but I wanted to get his permission. He was like: "˜Yeah, go ahead.'" Pete Rock isn't mentioned as a co-producer in the Low Terminate Theory credits, but Q-Tip gives him a shout-out at the end of "Jazz." Meanwhile, a lyrical stray shot from Phife Dawg "" "Strictly hardcore tracks, not a New Jack Swing" "" raised the ire of Teddy Riley protégédue south Wreckx-n-Result, best known at the time for the lame popular-rap striking "New Jack Swing" (and, afterwards, the fifty-fifty worse "Rump Shaker"). Wreckx-due north-Effect exacted revenge for Phife'southward diss past surrounding Q-Tip at a 1993 Naughty by Nature concert and punching him in the eye. The Zulu Nation and the Nation of Islam subsequently negotiated a truce between the two.

"Buggin' Out" (1991)

Those familiar with the video for "Jazz (We Got)" "" see above ""  will recall that the song abruptly ends at the 3:30 mark. Phife Dawg so says, "Yo, check thisÂout," and the black-and-white A-side shifts into the chief colored B-side, "Buggin' Out." "Microphone cheque, one-two, what is this?" rhymes the five-foot assassinator with the ruffneck business organisation over a live-and-direct Ron Carter bass line. Phife's 2d "Buggin' Out" poetry is even amend as he reveals how being in overcrowded New York can go overwhelming "like a migraine pounding," despairs about riding on the train "with no dough" and admits that sometimes he just wants to exist alone. "I had a twin blood brother that died at birth so I was a lonely child sometimes, but that loneliness helped me out a lot," Phife told The Source in 1993. "I'd be in the bathroom showering when I was mad young, and the rhymes would just be coming."

"Scenario" feat. Leaders of the New School (1992)

This was the song that kickstarted a cursory nonetheless glorious era of rah-rah fast rap: Tribe and Leaders of the New School chanting "then what's so what'southward so what'southward the scenario" at the peak of their lungs, and then blasting us with one killer verse subsequently another. Phife Dawg was the leadoff batter who sparked the session, and his line "bust a nut within your heart/To show yous where I come up from" was and so visceral that cable networks eventually censored it from broadcasts of the ensemble'south classic video. "My days of paying dues are over/Acknowledge me every bit in there," he rhymes. Ya goddamn right he's in there.

"Scenario (seven M.C.'south Remix)" feat. Kid Hood, Leaders of the New School (1992)

For the B-side of their iconic unmarried, A Tribe Called Quest refitted "Scenario" with a new beat, new lyrics and the same all-star bandage. One addition was the debut recording of roughneck MC Child Hood, whose "pump slugs in your face and dump that ass in the river" manner stood in stark dissimilarity to the electrically relaxed Tribe and the derisive Leaders, but whose souvenir for rhymes was unquestionable. Days subsequently recording the track, he was shot and killed in Harlem, leaving the "Scenario" remix the lone recorded appearance of this promising MC. "When I kickoff met him, he was rhymin'" Q-Tip told The Source. "He didn't say hello or nothin', he just started rhymin'. "¦ He really seemed similar he was sold on coming out and working hard. The solar day we taped, he went in the studio, took his shirt off, and went in the berth. He did information technology in one take." Though Child Hood wouldn't live to brand another song, his voice would live on: His "I'm a bad, bad man" quip was sampled extensively on Notorious B.I.G.'south Ready to Die.

"Hot Sex" (1992)

As hard as Tribe comes. The offset rails after The Low End Theory (surfacing originally on the Boomerang soundtrack) ditched bassy semi-acoustic jazz-funk for slamming, stripped downwardly electronics, with a beat that's equally nasty as the title suggests, built off a looped sample of Lou Donaldson'due south "Who'southward Making Love." Phife and Tip pace to suckers with all the nasty swagger they can summon: "I'm non Lawn Doctor so simply step off with the ho," Phife spits, while Tip boasts that "the poems that I create are for hookers and the crooks," donning a creepy mask in the video to hibernate the shiner that Wreckx-n-Effect had just given him for seeming to diss New Jack Swing on "Jazz (Nosotros've Got)."

"Award Tour" (1993)

The outset single on Midnight Marauders is pure celebration, finding Tribe and their buddy Trugoy from De La Soul in a glorious Native Tongues victory lap, from Brooklyn and Queens to London, Tokyo and across. Phife Dawg merely about bursts out of the speakers "" "[sliding] in the place/Buddy, buddy, buddy, all up in your confront" "" sounding live and lovable even when he's telling the listener to call him "Dyna-Mutt." "Award Tour" is a high indicate in the career of a human being with a rails record longer than a DC-xx aircraft.

"Sucka Nigga" (1993)

With one verse and one chorus, Q-Tip offers ane of rap's deeper looks at the most controversial and volatile word in the English language. "The suckas are those who front. Niggas who exist trying to rhyme all hard. I lived that shit, homo. That's something I vowed never to rhyme nearly," he toldVibe. "We've taken a word that the white man put on us in a derogatory sense and put love in it. But yet "" and nonetheless "" he tin't use it. I know information technology stems from a bad background, merely I'm only representing the street. All the kids in the street know where that shit comes from."

"Electric Relaxation" (1994)

Ane of A Tribe Called Quest'south best-loved songs perfectly encapsulates Q-Tip and Phife Dawg's comparable strengths as MCs. Q-Tip is the street poet funky enough to drop lines like "I wanna pound the poontang until it stinks," nevertheless he as well sensitively notes the ache of unrequited sexual attraction ("I couldn't driblet dimes "˜crusade yous couldn't relate"). Phife Dawg is the corner dude whose command of urban pop ephemera similar BBD'south failed 1993 single "Above the Rim" and BET Video LP host Madelyne Woods is only matched by his raunchy punch lines ("Let me salve the little man from within the bowl"). Underlining their back-and-forth flows is an inimitably slowed-downwardly loop of Ronnie Foster's "Mystic Brew" and a mumbled Q-Tip chorus that, in the pre-Internet days, had heads struggling to figure out what he says: "Relax yourself, girl … what?"

"Oh My God" feat. Busta Rhymes (1994)

A bass line reconfigured from Lee Morgan'south "Absolutions" darts underneath a busily horn-blimp track constructed from Kool & the Gang'southward "Who's Gonna Take the Weight?" and Busta busts out the championship on the chorus similar he can't believe he's had to look so long. But the MCs concord center phase. Tip sums himself upward in half dozen words "" "I'm a blackness intellect just unrefined" "" and Phife flirts memorably with Dawn Robinson if she happens to be listening. It's not easy to listen to Phife boast "When'southward the last time you heard a funky diabetic?" now that the disease has taken his life. But that line also sounds fiercer and more defiant than e'er.

"1nce Again" (1996)

Q-Tip was one of the earliest champions of J Dilla's muted, punchy, sample-distending production. He became enamored with it shortly after P-Funk keyboardist Amp Fiddler introduced him to the producer at a '94 Michigan Lollapalooza tour stop. Tip invited the young beat constructer, and then known professionally as Jay Dee, to bring together the Ummah product team. The starting time single from ATCQ'southward fourth album, "1nce Again," is 1 of the first major tastes of his sound: rap equally a woozy, chopped funhouse mirror. Smarter critics got it, only pulling a dark, moody In that location's a Riot Goin' On move after the empty-headed smash of "Award Tour" felt anticlimactic; having R&B singer Tammy Lucas handle the hook was anathema to true-school heads; and ATCQ documentary director Michael Rapaport fifty-fifty calls the track "the beginning of the end." Withal, there was very little out there like this at the fourth dimension, and "1nce Again" predicted some of the near critically adored beatmaking of the next decade.

"Stressed Out" feat. Faith Evans (1996)

The highlight of the "Baby Phife Version" of ATCQ's moody and downbeat "Stressed Out" is Phife Dawg's closing poetry. (The anthology version of "Stressed Out" doesn't include Phife, and instead focuses on Q-Tip trading mics with his cousin, newcomer Upshot. Consequence's outsized presence on ATCQ'south 1996 album didn't sit well with Phife, and tension lingered between the two during recording sessions.) Phife often plays the ruffneck counterpart to Q-Tip's wise-beyond-his-years sage, only hither he sounds like the mature one. He kicks a ragamuffin flow, noting how he takes medication for diabetes, and praises his loving wife, Deisha Taylor, and how "she cures me from stress." His cursory words about his spousal relationship "" "Lay my caput on her breast/Saccharide dumpling knows best" "" are among the nigh positive you'll hear about monogamous relationships in the hip-hop canon. Years later, Deisha was a kidney donor for her husband in 2008, and their relationship was chronicled in the documentary Beats, Rhymes and Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest.

"Observe a Style" (1998)

"We pretty much knew before the recording of The Dearest Movement that this was it. You better get your wind up 'cause this is the concluding trip the light fantastic toe," said Phife Dawg of the band's maligned 5th and final album. "Information technology'south weird to me that it would exist called The Dearest Motion because nosotros really were non loving that anthology, we were not loving putting out that anthology, we didn't fifty-fifty beloved each other at that time, and so to speak. It should have been called The Final Movement." Still, the group managed one concluding great unmarried before calling information technology quits. Over a Dilla-fried Ummah production, the group explored the complications that occur when you leave the friend zone.

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Source: https://rollingstoneindia.com/a-tribe-called-quest-20-essential-songs/

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