A Tribe Called Quest

• 1. Introduction

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  A Tribe Called Quest was born on the streets of Queens, New York City, in 1985, when two childhood friends from St. Albans started making music over pause tape beats. Q-Tip and Phife Dawg grew up on the same block. They could not have known that, within a decade, a Rolling Stones critic would describe them as "the most intelligent, artistic rap group during the 1990s". Nor could they have predicted that a musician as unlikely as Elton John would one day call them "the seminal hip-hop band of all time".

  What made A Tribe Called Quest so different? Why did jazz musicians sit in on their recording sessions? How did a group that turned down lucrative label offers for a modest deal end up inspiring everyone from Dr. Dre to Lauryn Hill? And how did four young men from Queens spend their final night together in 2015, on the same night Paris was attacked, deciding to make one last album in secret?

• 2. Queens, Demos, and a Name

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  Q-Tip, born Kamaal Fareed, first rapped under the name MC Love Child. He teamed up with Ali Shaheed Muhammad, a classmate from Murry Bergtraum High School, as a rapper and DJ duo. The two began making demos in 1985, with Q-Tip building beats on a pause tape. Phife Dawg, born Malik Taylor and another childhood friend, joined them, and they cycled through names: "Crush Connection", then simply "Quest".

  The final name came from an outside source. The Jungle Brothers, who attended the same high school as Q-Tip and Muhammad, coined "A Tribe Called Quest" in 1988. That year, Q-Tip made his first recorded appearances on two Jungle Brothers songs, "Black Is Black" and "The Promo". Shortly after, the four members gathered with De La Soul, Queen Latifah and Monie Love to form the Native Tongues collective, a loose alliance united by Afrocentrism, positivity, and eclectic sampling.

  Kool DJ Red Alert became their first manager. In early 1989, the group signed a demo deal with Geffen Records and recorded five songs, including the future single "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo". Geffen passed on offering them a full contract, freeing the group to shop elsewhere. They received offers from multiple labels for multi-album deals, but chose instead the modest deal from Jive Records, an independent rap label then known for building the careers of Boogie Down Productions and Too Short. That same year, the group released their first 12" single, "Description of a Fool".

• 3. Debut and Five Mics

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  People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm arrived on the 17th of April, 1990. Its mood was light: the lyrics wandered through safe sex, vegetarianism, and the texture of everyday youthful life. The music drew from jazz, funk, soul, and rock samples in equal measure.

  The Source magazine gave the album five mics, making it the first record in the magazine's history to earn that rating. NME's review went even further, stating: "This is not rap, it's near perfection." The record did not break through immediately, but when the singles "Bonita Applebum" and "Can I Kick It?" gained traction, momentum built steadily. The album eventually achieved gold certification in 1996, six years after its release.

  Pharrell Williams later said that People's Instinctive Travels was "the turning point which made me see that music was art." The rapper Scarface credited it with making him "want to rap." These were not casual compliments. They pointed to something the album had done structurally: shown that hip-hop could hold a different kind of weight.

• 4. The Low End Theory and Jazz in the Studio

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  The Low End Theory, released on the 24th of September, 1991, changed what hip-hop could sound like. Its lead single, "Check the Rhime", established the back-and-forth between Q-Tip and Phife Dawg that became the group's signature. Until that album, most Tribe recordings had featured Q-Tip alone on vocals. Q-Tip pushed Phife to take a larger role, even as Phife was dealing with a recent diabetes diagnosis.

  Musically, the album fused hip-hop with bebop and hard bop, stripped down to vocals, drums, and bass. Mixing engineer Bob Power took on a specific technical task: removing surface noise and static from old vinyl records, the very sounds that other producers left in for texture. Double bassist Ron Carter played on the song "Verses from the Abstract", a choice that signaled the group's seriousness about jazz as a living influence, not just a sample source.

  During the recording sessions, Jarobi White left the group to pursue a career in culinary arts. The group signed with Rush Artist Management and hired Chris Lighty as their new manager. The album peaked at No. 45 on the Billboard 200 and was certified gold on the 19th of February, 1992; it reached platinum status by 1995. The Source awarded it a second consecutive five mic rating, noting that Phife "practically steals the show." Dr. Dre later stated that The Low End Theory inspired his own debut, The Chronic. Pete Rock recalled watching Q-Tip sit on the floor of a record store, sifting through albums for samples, and said: "Being around the group made me step up and become even more serious than I was."

• 5. Midnight Marauders and Mainstream Arrival

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  Midnight Marauders arrived on the 9th of November, 1993. The lead single "Award Tour" became the group's highest-charting single and helped push the album to No. 8 on the Billboard 200. The production returned to the eclectic quality of the debut, now with a grittier funk influence. A "tour guide" voice, woven through the intro and the ends of several tracks, gave the album an unusual structural coherence.

  The lyrical chemistry between Phife Dawg and Q-Tip had sharpened considerably. "Electric Relaxation" performed well enough to become the opening theme song for the sitcom The Wayans Bros., running from 1995 to 1996. Guests included Large Professor, Busta Rhymes and Raphael Saadiq, credited then as Raphael Wiggins. Topics ranged from police harassment on "Midnight" to the use of the word nigga on "Sucka Nigga".

  Entertainment Weekly called the album "as fresh as their first." Melody Maker wrote that the group had found "a lyrical gravitas and a musical lightness of touch that has hitherto eluded them across a whole album." The Village Voice ranked it No. 21 in that year's Pazz and Jop critics' poll. Midnight Marauders was certified platinum on the 11th of January, 1995, just 14 months after its release, making it the group's fastest-selling album at that point.

  At the 1994 Source Awards, the group won Group of the Year. Tupac Shakur and his group Thug Life interrupted the acceptance speech with a performance of "Out on Bail"; it was later determined the interruption was accidental.

• 6. The Ummah and Internal Fractures

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  During the Lollapalooza tour in the summer of 1994, keyboardist Amp Fiddler introduced Q-Tip to a young producer from Detroit named Jay Dee. At Q-Tip's suggestion, Jay Dee joined him and Muhammad to form The Ummah, taking its name from the Arabic word for the worldwide Muslim community. Each member of the production unit composed independently and received individual songwriting credit. The Ummah handled production on the group's next two albums.

  The group's fourth album, Beats, Rhymes and Life, released on the 30th of July, 1996, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Jay Dee, a self-described fan of A Tribe Called Quest, contributed five beats, including both singles. Q-Tip's cousin Consequence appeared on six songs. But the album's creation was strained. Phife Dawg later described the period in a direct quote: "I really felt like with Midnight Marauders I came into my own. By the time when Beats, Rhymes and Life came out I started feelin' like I didn't fit in any more... Music felt like a job; like I was just doin' it to pay bills." He described flying from Atlanta to New York for studio sessions that were canceled without notice.

  Rolling Stone called the album "near-flawless"; The Source gave it four mics. It was nominated for Best Rap Album at the 1997 Grammy Awards, as was its single "1nce Again" for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group. The Love Movement followed on the 29th of September, 1998, and a month before its release the group announced it would be their last. They cited frustration with Jive as a key factor. The Love Movement was certified gold on the 1st of November, 1998, and was also nominated for Best Rap Album at the 1999 Grammy Awards. Then, after thirteen years together, the group disbanded.

• 7. Return, Loss, and One Final Album

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  In 2006, A Tribe Called Quest reunited partly to help Phife Dawg cover mounting medical expenses. They co-headlined that year's Bumbershoot festival in Seattle and performed sold-out shows across the United States, Canada, and Japan. In 2007, the group was honored at the 4th VH1 Hip Hop Honors, with a tribute performance by Busta Rhymes, Common, Lupe Fiasco and Pharrell Williams. In 2008, Phife Dawg received a kidney transplant from his wife.

  On the 13th of November, 2015, the group appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and simultaneously reissued People's Instinctive Travels in commemoration of its 25th anniversary, with remixes by Pharrell Williams, J. Cole and CeeLo Green. That same night, as terrorist attacks unfolded in Paris, the group felt, in their words, "charged." They decided then and there, in secret, to record a new album.

  Phife Dawg died on the 22nd of March, 2016, due to complications from diabetes. The album was unfinished. The surviving members continued recording after his death. We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service was announced in October 2016 and released on the 11th of November, 2016. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and featured posthumous contributions from Phife Dawg, alongside guest appearances by Andre 3000, Kendrick Lamar, Jack White, Elton John, Kanye West, Anderson.Paak, Talib Kweli and Busta Rhymes. The day after its release, the group performed on Saturday Night Live in front of a mural of Phife Dawg.

  On the 12th of February, 2017, the group performed at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards alongside Anderson.Paak, Busta Rhymes and Consequence. Later that month they won the Brit Award for International Group. The group performed their final concert on the 9th of September, 2017, at Bestival in Dorset, England. Their final video, a short film for the album's opening track "The Space Program", was released on the 29th of March, 2018. A solo album by Phife Dawg, mostly completed before his death, was released in 2022 under the title Forever.

• 8. Reach and Lasting Influence

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  Kierna Mayo, former editor-in-chief of Ebony, argued that The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders "gave birth to neo-everything.... That entire class of D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, Maxwell, and Lauryn Hill -- and moving on to Andre 3000, Kanye West, and Talib Kweli -- everything that is left of everything begins with Tribe." This was not a minor claim. It traced the neo soul genre back to a hip-hop group from Queens.

  The Roots drummer Ahmir Thompson took his stage name "Questlove" from A Tribe Called Quest, calling them "my Beatles." The electronic music group A Tribe Called Red, now known as The Halluci Nation, took their name directly from ATCQ. The group is also credited with helping launch the solo careers of Busta Rhymes, J Dilla, and Consequence.

  All six of A Tribe Called Quest's studio albums were certified either gold or platinum by the RIAA, making them the most commercially successful act in the Native Tongues collective. In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked The Low End Theory 153rd on its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time; by the 2020 revised edition, it had moved up to 43rd, and Midnight Marauders entered the list at 201st. In 2022, The Low End Theory was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry. A Tribe Called Quest was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2024, a fitting close to a career that began with two teenagers making demos over pause tape beats in St. Albans, Queens.