A Tribe Called Quest

Towards the end of the Eighties, that thing called hip hop had already largely taken flight, breaking through the exosphere of the ghetto thanks to groups like Public Enemy and Beastie Boys, but above all thanks to the genius of flow pioneers, and of every technique relating to DJing, sampling, scratching, beatboxing and whatever else you can think of, like Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, Eric B. & Rakim, and later the vast new-school cauldron that followed Run DMC and LL Cool J, acts like Ultramagnetic MC's and EPMD, right up to the Native Tongues Posse, the collective that united various East Coast souls under a proudly Afrocentric banner with the sole aim of spreading the conscious model across the entire planet; among its members were groups of the caliber of Jungle Brothers and De La Soul, but above all A Tribe Called Quest, one of the most outgoing and stylistically fearless outfits of the era.

Coming from the fiery streets of Queens, one of the largest, poorest and most incendiary boroughs of New York City, A Tribe Called Quest was born from an idea shared by two childhood friends, Q-Tip (Kamaal Ibn John Fareed) and Phife Dawg (Malik Izaak Taylor), MCs by vocation and passionate music lovers. Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Jarobi White soon joined them. What strikes you from the very first excellent impressions left by their blistering 1990 debut "People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm" — an album recorded at the memorable Calliope Studios and released on Clive Calder and Ralph Simon's Jive — is their ability to dress the purest rap model in jazz clothing. To this skill, up to that point the preserve of very few, they added the art of pulling verses steeped in pragmatism and Afro culture out of their sleeve.

"The Low End Theory" gathers up the rawer fragments of the first album, fitting them into an even broader, more meticulous and equally concise sonic puzzle. From the very first rhymes of the opening "Excursions", complete with a spoken-word passage borrowed from "Time" by the seminal Last Poets, and a double bass lifted bodily from "A Chant for Bu" by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, everything suddenly becomes remarkably clear. The group led by Q-Tip spares no expense, drawing from a parallel universe, obviously of Black origin, ancient and technically light years away from the urban phrasing and groove of the ghetto kids with a boombox blasting on their shoulder. The intent is to elevate a style born in the early years of the previous decade, and project it upward through fusions that were still unexplored at the time. It's no coincidence that the jazz-rap label was immediately pinned on the group by specialist magazines and outlets like Rolling Stone. At the same time, it's entirely fair to point out the influence of an album like "Straight Outta Compton" by N.W.A. as a source of inspiration, as Q-Tip himself has stressed in various interviews.

So the inclusion of purely jazzy elements, like the sample of the smooth "Minya's the Mooch" by Jack DeJohnette in the following "Buggin' Out", fully embodies the defining trait of the ATCQ brand. This time, Phife Dawg — who sadly passed away in 2016 — takes the lead, while references to the Universal Zulu Nation founded by Afrika Bambaataa back in 1973 and a declaration of belonging as "children of jazz" act as the glue holding together an entirely Black-rooted sound as a backdrop to an extremely sharp flow: "Zulu Nation, brothers last creation/Minds get flooded, ejaculation/Right on the two inch tape/The Abstract poet incognito, runs the cape/Not the best not the worst and occasionally I curse/To get my point across, so bust, the floss/As I go in between, the grit and the dirt/Listen to the mission listen Miss as I do work, umm/As I crack the, monotone/Children of the jazz so, get your own/Smokin R&B cause they try to do me/Or the best of the pack but they can't do rap/For it's Abstract, original/You can't get your own and that's, pitiful/I know I'd be the man if I cold yanked the plug/On R&B, but I can't and that's bugged".

The fluid, catchy rapping of the swift "Rap Promoter", which pays tribute to the Sugarhill Gang while sampling "Leaving on a Jet Plane" by Peter, Paul & Mary, and the introspective verses of "Butter", open the door to the wonderful and equally complex "Verses From The Abstract", featuring the towering double bassist Ron Carter, confirming an obsessive quest for a highly distinctive sound steeped in jazz to its very core. But "The Low End Theory", despite not featuring any of the frontal assault typical of other hip hop acts, still manages, through the invective against the system and the record business at large found in "Show Business", to be an equally protest-driven album. The track features full contributions from Diamond D, Lord Jamar and Sadat X as well. Samples of jazz origin also crop up once again on the album's "funniest" track, "The Infamous Date Rape", fitted out with a lopsided flow and an intoxicating gait.

The surgical crate-digging into Weather Report, Funkadelic, Sly & The Family Stone, Eric Dolphy, James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Jimi Hendrix continues through the grooves of an album that never stops surprising in the second half of the record, with the lively funk-rap blast of "Everything Is Fair", and the irreverent "Skypager". The killer single "Scenario" closes things out, featuring a collaboration with the mega collective Leaders of the New School, fronted for the occasion by a rising Busta Rhymes. What made this track even more memorable was the stratospheric performance ATCQ delivered on the legendary "The Arsenio Hall Show". The famous "Raow! Raow! Like a Dungeon Dragon!" unleashed by Busta Rhymes himself remains one of the high points in the history of rap.

If Run DMC gave the hip hop universe a shot of rock, and Public Enemy dressed it in sharp political clothing, A Tribe Called Quest managed to enrich the entire movement with jazz arrangements, lifting it to even higher, tremendously alluring stylistic planes, partly removed from the seething guts of the ghetto and the puddles of revolt. Without the fundamental contribution of masterpieces like "The Low End Theory", beatmakers of the stature of Madlib, and labels like Stones Throw, might not even exist today. Sorry, but that's no small thing.

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30/07/2017