11/30/2023 0 Comments Zulu nation hip hop history![]() Phife, Jarobi and the other two members of Tribe agreed to make the movie because they wanted their work to be documented, and because their peers pushed them to do it. "The way I see it, as of right now, you don't see a lot of that because you have to split that money three, four ways." ![]() But he's not surprised there aren't as many hip-hop groups working today. "I just know about my group and why we came together," Phife says. ![]() Notice I didn't even say album, we did projects." "The largest difference between the hip-hop game now and back then is that people make songs," Jarobi says. While they were in the studio, they say, their world was changing. But the story the band tells is different. In the story Rapaport tells in his film, Tribe broke up because Q-Tip and Phife vied for control and credit. Jimi Hendrix even broke up his group and formed another group. They had a huge impact on their peers and on a younger generation.Īs Rapaport points out, " The Beatles broke up. They worked collaboratively much of the time, sampling the jazz records their fathers loved instead of relying on the funk and James Brown samples rampant in hip-hop at the time. As far as lyrical topics, subjects, they were more heartfelt."Ī Tribe Called Quest burned hot and bright. ![]() "Creating music and specifically hip-hop," says Ali, "when it was still so new - I think the time period we lived in added to the greatness of the sound. They often thanked and name-checked each other on record. They competed and pushed each other to be better. They all made music together, shared studio time and traded ideas. We were trying to be those people."Ī Tribe Called Quest were part of a bigger community of people in New York making music that they believed was important: groups like the Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, Queen Latifah, Consequence, Leaders of the New School, Monie Love and more. Thelonious Monk and Mingus and Charlie Parker. "We were just trying to be fly," Jarobi says. Ali Shaheed went to the same high school as Q-Tip. "Me and Jarobi became best friends from like 12 until now. "Me and Q-Tip were best friends from like 2 to 15," Phife says. The two predominant vocalists in the group were Phife Dawg and Q-Tip. The money and the fame and all of that stuff, that was all secondary." Am I enjoying it? Do I feel good about it? Yes? That's what we're doing. How it felt was the only thing that matters. Everything was just flying by the seat of your pants. "Being so young, I mean 19, 18, that's young," he says. Original group member Jarobi White says he was having more fun than anybody else, and his crew was firing on all cylinders. When A Tribe Called Quest was first getting started, straight out of high school, it was the '80s, and hip-hop was young. That was really my reasoning for the film: Can they make more music? Will they make more music? Why did it end?" They meant so much, emotionally, to the fans that I wanted to know why. ![]() "When they broke up in 1998," he says, "their last album The Love Movement - I was unsatisfied with that and I just didn't understand why they were breaking up. But, like the group itself, the film is complicated.įilmmaker Michael Rapaport - the same Michael Rapaport who acted in True Romance and appeared on Chappelle's Show - is a hardcore Tribe fan. In the span of four years, starting in 1990, the group released three albums widely acknowledged by hip-hop fans to be among the best ever: People's Instinctive Travels and The Paths of Rhythm, The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders.Ī new documentary, called Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest tries to tell the musicians' story. Pioneering hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest hit that balance in a spectacular way. For a group of musicians to cohere, almost everything needs to balance out: ego, work ethic, knowledge, health, experience. Turning a handful of people into one really good, productive band is so complicated it's almost a miracle when it happens. From left to right, Jarobi White, Q-Tip, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Phife Dawg.Įrnie Paniccioli/Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics ![]()
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