Today We are joined by a Special Guest: Luthando Majija. She gives us a beautifully written article that is accompanied by a playlist even. You'll find it on our Music page and her Apple Music. And its good, trust
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A Tribe Called Quest weren’t the first to blend jazz loops with intricate rhyme schemes, but they did it better than most of their predecessors. I could mention the Pharacyde, De La Soul, the Roots and Digital Planets - but there’s something about tribe that had a magnetic pull when listening to it. Tribe created a genuine hip hop movement by mashing together jazz and rap in a way that made you want to fall in love but also be gangster.
Midnight Marauders is probably tribes most memorable album. This album is a beautiful merge of cool jazz and loud boom-bap. Electric relaxation is an example of the beautiful merge. The beat makes you feel like you’re floating. It’s a cool and carefree beat like a bunch of your friends nodding to a beat then the lyrics are an ode to the city girls - the ones that don’t have time for nonsense, the “in my bag out my feelings” type girls. The words in this song however, are not the point it’s about you and your crew cruising down the street, the music giving rhythm and purpose to the road, everyone nodding along to the beat.
Q-tip and Phife had undeniable chemistry in most of their projects. They’re ability to feed off each other and write for each other is one that made Tribes projects addictive. Check the Rhime from The Low End Theory is an example of this chemistry as the two are able to seamlessly trade bars with each other and Phife describes how they sometimes wrote each other’s bars in previous interviews.
Tribe opened the door for many other genres one of them being neo-soul and they did this with the song, Bonita Applebum from their debut album, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm in 1990. This song might be the coolest hip hop love song to come out in that time. The way this song is built out is like a scene from a movie. This song demonstrates the group’s mellow side and turned Q-tip into a “sex symbol” of some sort in that time. Q-tip pursues this woman in a way most women I know would like to be pursued. Very honest, very confident and very smooth.
My favourite samples of this song are from the Fugees - Killing me softly and Hov’s I Know.
Tribe blended jazz loops and rap in a style future geniuses were eager to steal. Take Kanye’s “Trough the Wire” which has a big boom-bap influence and Mos Defs “Ms. Fat Booty”. These songs and many more have a specific boom-bap sound that I’d like to think was influenced by Tribe.
Tribe birthed my love for artists such as Common, Mos Def, J Dilla, Slum Village. These artists further dived into the fast-growing concept of jazz and rap fusions and did it very well.
After reading this it’s quite simple to see what my favourite music group of all time is. This group is to hip hop jazz what Prince is to funk. Prince created music that blended funk with rock, pop, R&B, soul and disco to form a genre many people struggled to name but is probably best described as Prince. However, that is a discussion for another day.
I could go on and on about this group and its influence in hip hop but I’ll stop here
In memory of Phife Dawg from the Zulu Nation