And that was it, too: the sound. What Rza was able to do was a sharp departure from what was happening before. The goal of the album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), sonically, was to find a way to shift the gritty underground sounds into something that was digestible for the mainstream. In a way, this was catapulting off the success of a blueprint that A Tribe Called Quest had laid out, but Rza was interested in a sound that was darker. There were samples on the album, yes. But with the new sampling laws coming into effect right before the album’s creation, the samples were fewer and further between. Additionally, the samples were voice-heavy, particularly thick with dialogue from martial arts films that were cult classics, like Five Deadly Venoms and Shaolin and Wu Tang. “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’” starts with a combination of dialogue from both films that weaves together seamlessly:
A game of chess is like a swordfight:
You must think first before you move
Toad style is immensely strong
And immune to nearly any weapon
When it’s properly used it’s almost invincible.
The first two lines are from Shaolin and Wu-Tang, and the last three are from Five Deadly Venoms. They weave together so well in both sound and topic that it’s hard to imagine them as disparate. This trick is pulled a handful of times on the album, blending dialogue from separate films and pushing them together within the context of a single song. What Rza may have been getting at here, then, is the idea of pulling at the edges of anything that might fit together, and throwing it all in the same pot until everything found its own harmony. That is the ethos of the Wu-Tang Clan. Many of the MCs spent the nineties (and beyond) cultivating flourishing solo careers, but on the albums with the group, each still managed to flourish, and to do so without sacrificing much of their skill set. It was something that most other rap groups hadn’t figured out yet, even the successful ones. There’s a way to look at this that says there were no weak links in the Clan, but there’s another way that says any weakness that any member had was eliminated by the ways each member of the group could so richly prioritize their strengths. It’s something Tribe hadn’t figured out until about an album and a half in, despite their success.
Rza’s dialogue-based samples paired with heavy and haunting string melodies or sharp and jarring organs. When there were samples of jazz and soul, they were often perfunctory—exercises to build a small part of the canvas that Rza was later coloring over with paint of his own making. There were exceptions to this—the soaring Gladys Knight and the Pips sample on “Can It Be All So Simple” howls through the song like a renegade wind. But largely, the samples aren’t the stars of the show, rather the manipulation of the samples is. Rza gets the samples to bend until they are hardly noticeable, and I imagine this, too, is a type of hard core—to put hands around the neck of a sound until it is reborn as a new sound.
It also created a reliance on soul music samples that was, at the time, less heard of. A loophole that Rza found was that soul samples were slightly easier to clear and a bit less expensive than the jazz and old rock samples that some of his peers had relied on. And if he viewed the main function of the sample as something to be manipulated, it almost didn’t matter what it’s original form was. Of course, about a decade later, rap music would live through an entire era dedicated almost entirely to the manipulation of the soul sample. But in the moment, it was a novel concept, especially that of washing over the sample with such richly violent instrumentation. This style of production opened doors for producers like Havoc, who shaped the sound of Mobb Deep’s early albums from Rza’s blueprint, most noticeably on the 1996 album Hell on Earth, which is sparse and beautiful, and would perhaps sound best playing over a graveyard on a cloud-filled day while tree branches trembled under the weight of a hundred black birds.
Mobb Deep was in many ways a group very much like Tribe themselves. Like Tribe, they were from Queens. Like Tribe, their music relied on a producer who took on rapping duties and a rapper who worked in harmony with the producer as best he could. Like the members of Tribe, Havoc and Prodigy were childhood friends who aspired to be rappers, and chased after the dream until they made it happen. Like Tribe, Mobb Deep released their first album—1993’s Juvenile Hell—when they were just teens, and though it had some marginal success, they didn’t gain their footing until they figured out their formula on their second album, the critically and commercially successful The Infamous, released in 1995. The difference between the two groups was perhaps not in the way they saw the world, but in the way they manifested their seeing of the world. Mobb Deep was rugged and cynical. The Queens they wrote about was one that was a place merely to survive at all costs. Their music was laced with a type of fear and paranoia that bled through the sonic landscape: an avalanche of drums from each direction; a sharp synth slicing through like a knife; piano loops and distorted bass lines that sounded like they could have been pulled out of a horror film.
Havoc didn’t know much of anything about production when he decided to take on the majority of production duties for The Infamous; he just knew that the group couldn’t afford to keep sifting through producers to find things they would often discard. “We started producing because other producers was giving us shit that we didn’t like, or they was just charging too much,” Havoc said in Brian Coleman’s Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies. So he figured he could do it himself.
A little-known fact about The Infamous is that when the group was trying to find their way in the studio in the early months of 1994, a fan of their music reached out. Q-Tip had heard a song called “Shook Ones” that was starting to circulate in the underground rap circles in New York. Intrigued, and fascinated by the idea of a Queensbridge collaboration—and currently in between projects himself—he dropped in on the group in the studio. By then a somewhat sought-after studio mind, Q-Tip was in awe of how the group had taken to crafting their own sound. The engineer that was assigned to work on the album wasn’t interested, largely because of the group’s reputation for how they spent their studio time. Weed, guns, fights, and dice games would all spill out at any given time, so the label-picked engineer wasn’t exactly as interested in being hands-on with the group. Q-Tip, however, was more than equipped to speak the group’s language and act as a type of translator between the engineer and the group itself, before he took over much of the mixing duties himself.
Q-Tip hadn’t really engineered as much as he’d produced, but he took to it well. Havoc’s ability to layer music gently and to articulate what each song needed made Q-Tip’s job easy. Havoc, a fan of Tribe, knew that Q-Tip could figure out drums in a way that he couldn’t yet, so Q-Tip’s main function was to move sounds around to best accent the other sounds. “Put your shit on it,” Havoc would tell Q-Tip while playing him new records. Q-Tip, for his part, told Havoc that what would really bring out some of the hardcore elements they were reaching for in the album was if they leaned into the idea of using major chords on the album, and let the instruments really take up space and linger. You hear this on a song like “Survival of the Fittest,” where a piano riff swells and swells, stepping heavily over the drums and horn. Q-Tip was invaluable to the album’s process, mixing eight of the songs and coproducing the songs “Temperature’s Rising,” “Give Up the Goods,” and “Drink Away the Pain” under the name “The Abstract.”
On “Give Up the Goods,” particularly, one can hear Q-Tip’s touch—the way the high hats lend a smoothness over the otherwise heavy weight of the song. It provided a glimpse into how Tribe could find its way to maneuver this new direction of rap. It was the excitement that Q-Tip saw and heard in the exuberant ear of Havoc that perhaps sparked a renewed excitement. Mobb Deep was Tribe through a funhouse mirror of despair, righteous anger, violence, and the rich ability to articulate it all without any softening. Rap was starting to go to a place Tribe hadn’t shown they could reach yet, and the stakes were high for the group all over again.
The cloud had not only descended
lower but had also managed to spread. Between the years of 1993 and 1996, rap had become more entrenched not only in a coastal battle but in the blossoming of regional sounds. By 1996, Outkast had come along, debuting with Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik in 1994, and really cementing themselves as leaders of the new southern sound with ATLiens in 1996, with its space-funk and reverb, creating an atmosphere that felt both futuristic and also distinctly southern. Also out of Atlanta, Jermaine Dupri’s So So Def record label was gaining its footing, releasing albums by Da Brat and Kris Kross to establish themselves. Beyond that, by 1996, Master P’s No Limit Records was blooming out of New Orleans, with his Ice Cream Man album being a surprise success, followed by Silkk the Shocker’s The Shocker as another hit. While this output was promising for the lifespan of the genre as a whole, it was one small part of a larger storm brewing along the coasts, both of which had felt largely alone in their territories and now had an escalation of talent and tension coming for them. Everything in the genre became louder by default.
It is hard to say exactly when the boiling point occurred. I like to think that there were several boiling points, and they simply kept speeding past one another, until the temperature was simply no longer manageable for anyone. But if there is a prominent boiling point to turn to, it can be said that the 1995 Source Awards changed the trajectory of rap’s tensions. By that point, Death Row Records was a viable and respected institution on the West Coast, and Puff Daddy’s Bad Boy Records, led by the breakout star the Notorious B.I.G., was climbing the ladder on the East Coast. Puff Daddy was the label head and main face of the brand. He was charismatic and played a very particular role in the career of his artists, B.I.G. specifically. Puff began as an intern at Uptown Records, where he helped develop the career of Mary J. Blige and gained a reputation as both a keen eye for talent and someone who was more than equipped at not only starting a party but also keeping a party going. By 1993, during the recording of the Notorious B.I.G.’s debut album, Ready to Die, Puff’s ego and vision began to confuse and frustrate his coworkers at Uptown, and label head Andre Harrell had seen enough. He couldn’t manage both his label and the intern he hired at his label, so he let Puff go, and told him to take B.I.G. with him. From the ashes rose Bad Boy Records, and East Coast rap’s newest star. Biggie was wildly skilled and also a character: he was a large, dark-skinned MC who was both deeply streetwise and also very invested in cultivating his image as a lover—someone who desired women and was equally desired by them. This formula made Ready to Die a runaway critical and commercial success. Biggie could rap, but he could also be sold to an audience with relative ease. What helped was that Puff Daddy was his hype man, a role he played in the visual aesthetics of all Bad Boy artists, but none as well as he did with Biggie. Puff was a hovering presence in every sound, every visual, as either an ad lib or a wave of ad libs, such as dancing in videos. He both wasn’t and was an artist. Bad Boy’s advantage was almost unfair in its earliest days. It had not only one of the greatest new artists in rap music but also an executive producer who had the style, charisma, and ego to eclipse most artists on every other label, without even rapping a verse. Puff Daddy knew what Suge Knight knew: the game, at some point, had to sell. And nothing sells like conflict.
The thing about the 1995 Source Awards is that they should have been a celebration of hip-hop’s evolution. That was the second full-fledged year of the Source Awards, which started out as a kind of sideshow on Yo! MTV Raps in 1991. The 1995 Source Awards were a full-on production, staged at Madison Square Garden for the second year. In 1994, the awards came and went with very little tension but for one moment: during a performance mix-up, an energetic 2Pac took the stage with his entourage at the same time that Q-Tip was scheduled to take the stage and present an award. 2Pac’s music began playing from a DAT tape, and he and his group ran out and started performing, while Q-Tip stood at the side of the stage, bewildered. It was a common awards show mix-up, with likely no ill intent behind it. But with the already rising tensions between the coasts, even in mid-1994, neither party could be sure. Members of 2Pac’s group and members of Zulu Nation exchanged sharp words, but the altercation never escalated to physical violence.
Just months later, in November of 1994, 2Pac was shot five times while exiting a New York City recording studio. Shortly thereafter, he vocally insisted that his once friend but new rival the Notorious B.I.G. may have had something to do with the setup. And so, by the time the 1995 Source Awards rolled around, the East Coast–West Coast feud had imprinted its name on bullets that echoed through the skin of one of rap’s brightest young stars. Rather than back down, both coasts responded with a harsher, more arrogant approach.
At the time of the awards, 2Pac was in jail, stemming from a sexual assault charge. Suge Knight had yet to bail him out and align him with Death Row Records, but that plan was brewing. Meanwhile, the East Coast backlash to the rising tide of the West Coast was at an all-time high. Death Row Records was thriving on the back of Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, who released his critically acclaimed debut album, Doggystyle, just a year earlier in 1993. On top of this, many in East Coast rap circles took offense to 2Pac pointing fingers at Bad Boy Records with what seemed like little proof. Bad Boy wasn’t entirely beloved, but they were still worthy of being protected.
Suge Knight and Death Row Records personnel crossed the country for the Source Awards and ended up sitting to the left of the aisle in the front row. Puff Daddy and Bad Boy records staff were aligned on the other side of the aisle, in the front row to the right. Here is the thing you may remember: Suge Knight, massive and cloaked in red, grabbing the microphone with gold adorning his wrists, and declaring:
“Any artist out there that wanna be an artist, stay a star, and won’t have to worry about the executive producer trying to be all in the videos, all on the records, dancing—come to Death Row!”
It was early in the show, an opening shot fired across the bow that echoed through the night. What happened throughout the rest of the show created the true architecture for version 2.0 of the East Coast–West Coast feud. Now that the guns had been drawn in the first act and fired in the third, no stakes were too high, no sentiment too bold to attach to one’s name. During Bad Boy’s performance at the awards, a charged-up Puff Daddy grabs the mic and yells: “I LIVE IN THE EAST, AND I’M GONNA DIE IN THE EAST!” much to the joy of the crowd. Later, when Snoop Dogg takes the stage, he is booed roundly, and somewhere at the intersection of pride and pain, he stands back:
“The East Coast ain’t got no love for Snoop Dogg? The East Coast ain’t got no love for Snoop Dogg and Death Row?”
The crowd continues booing, confirming that it does, in fact, not have love for Snoop Dogg and Death Row.
“All right, well let it be known, then,” says Snoop, before storming off stage.
And then, up comes Outkast, merely collateral damage on the predetermined battlefield. When they won Best New Artist, the crowd began booing again. By this point in the night, there was almost a knee-jerk reaction to anything that wasn’t New York. A young André 3000 accepted the award, scowling at the audience, and becoming prophetic.
“The South got something to say, that’s all I got to say.”
When the curtain went down on the Source Awards in 1995, hip-hop was fractured—into a land of many tribes, a country of many countries, seemingly drifting aggressively apart, with blood starting to faintly spread across the sky.
Beats, Rhymes and Life was released in the middle of the summer in 1996, which was a good time in one of rap’s best years. There was enough sound variance to offset the coastal bitterness boiling underneath. The Fugees released The Score that winter, an eclectic and brilliant album that soared to the top of the charts. In the spring, Tribe’s old Native Tongues mate Busta Rhymes released his debut album The Coming, featuring production by The Ummah—a collective composed of Q-Tip, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and J Dilla—and a guest verse from Q-Tip. Busta’s unparalleled style and energy took the rap worl
d by storm, and the album was a hit, boosted by its single “Woo-Hah!! Got You All in Check,” which was played up in a colorful video directed by Hype Williams, with Q-Tip and Phife appearing in cameos. Earlier in the summer, the anticipated debut solo album by Jay-Z, Reasonable Doubt, dropped, presenting a new direction for storytelling rap: the hustler made good, as if Al Pacino survived the bullets in Scarface. In July, right before Tribe’s album was released, De La Soul released Stakes Is High, an album that was well received but furthered their departure from their early Native Tongues sound. It was their last album for four years. Nas—rap’s golden child just two years earlier—also released his second album, It Was Written, the follow-up to his debut classic, Illmatic.
So by the time Beats, Rhymes and Life came into the world in late July, the table had already been set. Rap was having one of its most successful years since its inception, and radio was hungry for it. It can be argued that all Tribe had to do was not fall on their faces, and they didn’t. It was the start of a decline, sure—maybe. But there are so few mountains higher than the mountain A Tribe Called Quest found themselves on after their first three albums, and the world around them was changing. It is better to stay largely where you are than attempt to go higher and have a whole world notice your falling.
It isn’t like Tribe lay dormant from 1993 to 1996. At the peak of their powers after Midnight Marauders, and with enough notable and memorable material to support them, they toured extensively for nearly three years straight, taking little time off from the road. This upset the natural order of their production process. Their first few albums worked so well because they felt like one continuous piece of music: sessions for one album would end and spill over into sessions for a new album. Tribe was never not working on the next thing, until the next thing was all about how many shows they could pack into a week or a month or a year. They were both stagnant and not. It’s hard to innovate the new when thousands of voices are still singing along to the old. They weren’t able to turn corners as fast as they were before, when their entire mindset going into a project revolved around being able to rush into and play off of whatever new sounds hip-hop was offering. Because so much of their time was spent on the road, or with Q-Tip working on non-Tribe projects, the group was treading water for the first time in their careers.
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