I’m saying there’s a language for this that I never quite understood but for you showing it to me. I hope whatever path you take leads you back to the arms of Tribe, but even if it never does, you’ve found a way to make a world again. You’ve found a way to give someone like me a place to land this time, and it wasn’t just in a high school gym, but also in the open mouth of a window in a summer when it was too hot to breathe. Lucy Pearl was a feeling, Ali. I imagine you first as the angel that held me close and asked me to read when I could not see the words for myself. I imagine you first as the person who guided my hand, who guided the language onto my tongue.
Q-TIP,
I am glad it was not you that we lost in the fire, though records are also worth mourning. When I first read the story of the fire at the end of the 1990s, I thought of how impossible it seemed for any one person to own twenty thousand records. But I’d heard this about you—how you dug through all of the sounds you could possibly find to make your own brand of magic. I imagine it was the unreleased songs that hurt most. It was early 1998, and I’m sure you already knew that Tribe was going to be finished. I imagine you knew before the rest of us did. But the foolish among us were still holding out hope that you all would be together forever.
Everyone uses the same metaphor about fire: how those immersed in it rise from the ashes newer and sometimes better. It’s tired, to be sure. But it works here. How you—with no records to sample—learned to make the music you had been hearing in your head the whole time. You learned to translate the beating on the table from the school where you and Phife were once young.
What didn’t satisfy people about you is that your brand of genius never trended as close to madness as we’re used to seeing, or that people want to see. Everyone wants a performance from the people they consider to be brilliant. Everyone wants the genius to eventually fall apart as a penance, some punishment for getting too close to the sun. You just worked harder than anyone else. Sometimes, it’s a gift passed down from somewhere holy, and sometimes it’s just hard work, and sometimes it’s both. I don’t know the toll it takes to keep a group alive past their expiration date. To drag people to the studio when they don’t want to be there. To ask people to hear things that only you can hear. I’m sorry if I never gave you enough credit for that. I’m sorry that in the months after Tribe went away, I stayed mad at you, as if you could hold my anger in your hands and feel it from miles away. I’m sorry I blamed you for talking too much in interviews with the group, and for making Phife feel small. I think you maybe earned everything. But I hope you can understand wanting someone to blame for watching the greatness of an entire childhood slip through your fingers.
Tip, I must also admit that I found myself mad again when I heard your first offering, and I found myself mad again when I watched the video for said offering—drenched in black and white, half-naked women dancing on top of cars. Everyone I knew thought we’d lost you when Amplified came out in 1999, you on the cover with your arms stretched out wide with a silver shiny jacket adorning your shirtless body. I get it. It was the 1990s, and Big was gone and Tupac was gone and Big L was gone, and all white people could talk about was blood and bullets. Maybe you put away your records and decided to party for a while. To grab J Dilla by the collar and get him to lay down some drums motherfuckers could dance to.
I miss Dilla, Tip. Don’t you? Don’t you hear him sometimes when you close your eyes at night, as I do? If I could have one more year of him, I’d trade one hundred of our finest geniuses. But not you, Tip. Did you know that Dilla went to the same hospital to die as Biggie did? Did you know that inside his hospital room he rebuilt an entire studio so that he could finish Donuts? Did you know the story of his mother? How, when his hands were swollen and in pain from the disease taking over his body, she would massage them until the swelling went down so that he could finish working on the album? And, oh, what a joy Donuts was for us, Tip. How Dilla gave it to us with one hand, and then climbed his way to heaven with the other. I’m sure you knew all of this. I’m talking to you like maybe you didn’t.
I want you to know that I no longer determine genius by how much pain someone can endure, and I owe Dilla for that, and you owe Dilla for so much more. I wanted you two to have another run at something, Tip. I wanted you both to create something that I could receive in a season where I felt nothing for you but a deep and abiding gratitude.
I heard Arista shelved your album back in 2002 because they didn’t think it would hold up commercially, and can you believe that? This is why geniuses have to die first, I guess. I’m sorry that somewhere, someone behind a desk lost faith in you. I’m sorry that somewhere there are no horns or maybe no drums, or maybe somewhere there is a house on fire with every record that someone owns on the inside while they watch from a street where they can see the notes of all the music they love drifting into the air.
I’m not going to ask you to bring A Tribe Called Quest back. I read somewhere that you’re working on something new—a return to form, the magazines say. Tip, did you ever listen to Phife’s album? The solo album that no one bought and the one we were told no one listened to? I listened to it, Tip. It occurs to me now, all these years later, that he was maybe writing to you the whole time. Not as an apology—but just to show you how great he was all along. Do you know what it’s like to be a little brother? You’re always proving yourself, even when you think you’re not. I’ve started to wonder if no one loved Phife’s album because it was a love letter only to you and no one else. I want to know if you listened to it then, and I want to know if you still listen to it now. I want to know if you’re as proud of him as I was. You don’t have to tell him out loud, but I wish I could see the faintest smile spread across your face at the first opening of your brother’s rhymes, Tip. I hope you aren’t mad anymore, and I hope he’s not mad anymore, and I hope you can forgive me for being mad once, but never again.
I once balled up a small fist and swung it as hard as I could at my older brother’s face. Not because I wanted to hurt him, but because I wanted him to imagine a world in which I was unafraid to hurt him. There is a difference there—between wanting to harm someone and wanting to be feared. The part of the story that I don’t tell is that after I hit my brother—after the punch danced across his face and left a small red mark—I ran away and locked myself in a closet while he seethed with rage. I made myself small in a corner with a pile of dirty clothes. I held my knees to my chest and I wept, and I am not sure why. I was maybe afraid. Not of the consequences, but of the brand-new knowledge of what my fists were capable of. If we are blessed with working hands at our birth, we then spend our lives making them into the machines we want them to be.
What I’m mostly saying, Tip, is that I’m glad we didn’t lose you in the fire. I’m glad it was only music and a few songs and nothing else. I’m glad you learned how to rebuild, time and time again.
What I’m mostly saying, Tip, is that I haven’t thrown a punch in years. The last time I did, I left a small brown mark in a white wall, and I swear the only sound that echoed back was the sound of something you made with your bare hands.
CHAPTER NINE
Documentary
The documentary surely seemed like a good idea. Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest was a documentary released in 2011. It was helmed by actor and first-time director Michael Rapaport. Rapaport was a longtime Tribe fan who thought there was no reason not to attempt to put a film together. Even in 2011, thirteen years after the group’s final album, there was still interest in them. If anything, the interest had heightened. They’d been gone so long, with only Q-Tip remaining very publicly active in music spaces over a consistent period during that time. The group, then, became seen as almost mythical. Their run in the early nineties was so distant but still something that was talked about, as if you had to have been there to fully appreciate it. Because their sound was so ahead of its time and concerned with pushing the boundaries of the spaces it was in, they mad
e more sense in 2011, when the intricacies of multiple samples and a smoother sound template were seeping back into rap. Their old albums were being cited by rap’s new stars as albums that offered a way into the genre. And so, with that, younger rap fans were getting hip to them and sticking around.
Moreover, Tribe became a staple around the discussion about what “real” hip-hop was. This discussion becomes more common with each passing year, as hip-hop heads of a certain era age, and the genre becomes more watered down—something that happens to every genre of music as it gets older. Tribe’s music became a weapon—which was happening even before they split—used in opposition to the shiny suits, and then in opposition to more hardcore rap, and then in opposition to rap that people deemed to have no substance.
People talked about Tribe like they weren’t real, which they weren’t. Kind of. There would be Tribe sightings: headlining a festival in San Diego in 2004, or in a run of concerts in 2006, or headlining the Rock the Bells festival in both 2008 and 2011. Through all of this, however, there was never an understanding that the group was reunited. They were doing their brand of citizenship for the genre. A nostalgic revival kicked back up in the 2000s, and they could both cash in on that and serve the people who were craving it.
If you caught A Tribe Called Quest during any of this time, you saw a group that looked like it could, potentially, reunite. They weren’t playing anything new, but the energy they had was thrilling. During both Rock the Bells tours—but particularly the latter—Tribe was the main attraction. This, on a bill with other heavy-hitting acts from their era: Lauryn Hill, Snoop Dogg, Nas. The crowds would show up in droves for all acts, but most of the excitement was about Tribe. This was layered, of course: Lauryn Hill was erratic and elusive, and Nas and Snoop Dogg were still very much active creators of music. Tribe was the outlier, the greatest novelty act that could be found.
Their shows at Rock the Bells were crowd pleasers, though no one could deny that aesthetically, the group was very different. Phife was heavier, bogged down by his illness and a somewhat stubborn refusal to change his diet and exercise routine with any consistency. Q-Tip would be decked out in a high fade haircut and a leather jacket, despite the summer heat, a completely rebuilt look from his days in Tribe. Phife—remaining customary—would cover himself in an old sports jersey or T-shirt. There was perhaps no better metaphor for the direction of the group’s two main vehicles than this one: Phife, clinging to how people saw him then, and Q-Tip, dressing as a version of himself from the future.
Regardless of looks, the group’s on-stage synchronicity was as sharp as it ever was. To the naked eye, they were tight, well choreographed, and having a great time. They would rap lines at each other while nodding with approval, finish each other’s lines with energy. During one performance on the 2010 Rock the Bells tour, Q-Tip managed to lose his shorts, and he ran through the audience, jumping up and down with the crowd. Their shows in New York were particularly thrilling, with the group bringing out old friends like Busta Rhymes and Consequence to join them on stage to re-create some of their past glory. In a great moment at Rock the Bells New York in 2010, Tribe performed “Bonita Applebum” while the Wu-Tang Clan waited backstage for their time to perform. All members of the group gave in to temptation and began swaying along to the classic they knew, some waving their arms, some clapping on beat.
It was enough to make people forget that the group was apart for a reason. In the early 2010s, rap was even less familiar with the concept of aging than it is now. When rap first started, it was a young man’s game, but there was a point in the early 1990s when it seemed like the young men who started it might age into older men who were able to have viable careers well into their aging. But by the time the 2000s came around, that notion was largely shot. Rap had not only become an even younger man’s game, but the trends associated with rap had begun switching more and more rapidly. Hip-hop’s epicenter, as predicted, moved from New York to Atlanta, and with that came a shifting of sound priorities and a need to always be a step ahead of trends. A Tribe Called Quest was fine existing this way in the nineties, before social media and things like ringtones and streaming. None of these things would have stopped Tribe from having a lot of interest in the realm of new music scenes and communities, but it would have been harder for them to keep up at a pace they wanted to while also making music they deemed meaningful. This is what the real issue was. It wasn’t just that older acts were aging out of the genre; it’s that it became harder and harder for them to make music that would be both worthwhile to them and commercially impactful enough to sustain their making more music. A Tribe Called Quest was the best novelty act around, but they were still a novelty act, existing with so much enthusiasm, in part, because no one expected or wanted them to get back together and produce anything new.
The documentary seemed like it would be worthwhile because all of the members were still alive and in close enough proximity to one another. It wouldn’t be a story told from the depths of the kind of grief that comes after a member of a group has died and the group must put on their best face. Rapaport thought the documentary could be at its most honest by capturing the group in the exact space they were in. Phife, Ali, and Jarobi needed the tours and shows more than Q-Tip did, from a career and financial standpoint. Q-Tip seemed happy to be doing them, but he didn’t exactly need to be there. That in and of itself was a tension, one that had existed within the group for almost every iteration of their career: the idea that Q-Tip could be somewhere else, doing something else, but was there to carry the group again.
At the heart of any great music documentary, there has to be either tragedy or conflict. No one really wants to see the story of how a band got to be a band once and how they made a lot of money, lost no friends, and rode off into the sunset unscathed by the music industry. If I tell you that my homies and I weren’t homies anymore but had to stick it out for the sake of our shared investment in a thing we’d started, you’d want to know why. If I told you that my homies and I got so close to the promised land we’d imagined that we could rest our palms on the clouds outside the gates, you might understand why we’d want to get there again, despite the fact that it might not be the healthiest endeavor for us.
Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest is largely about sacrifice, but who is doing the most sacrificing depends on which lens you view the film through. If there is a single thing to be drawn from the film, it is that there is one member who stands in the line of fire in the name of the group. It has long been presented that Q-Tip had to be the person who solely answered for any of A Tribe Called Quest’s successes and failures, right or wrong. If there is a person who makes themselves large enough to act as the absorber of all a group’s trials, they also get to absorb more than their share of a group’s successes.
This was a tipping point for Tribe. Q-Tip took much of the group’s heat when things didn’t go the way fans thought they should—particularly after Beats, Rhymes and Life and The Love Movement, when Tribe was just a rap group and no longer an earth-shifting entity. Phife, Jarobi, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad were able to use Q-Tip as a shield from some of that direct criticism: Jarobi because so few people were aware of his role in the group, and Ali because he was so often behind the scenes toiling away. But Phife, whether he wanted to or not, got to use Q-Tip as a shield—the massive personality and creative reputation that Q-Tip brought to the table gave Phife a lot of cushion and comfort in silence. It was Tip who the press wanted to talk to, it was Tip who had to answer for any change in the group’s creative direction. It was Phife who showed up and rapped and could pass himself off as going along with the flow.
From another angle, Phife’s illness was suffering under the group’s rigorous performance, recording, and touring schedule. He was giving himself over to the group’s creative whims, particularly during the recording of Beats, Rhymes and Life, when he was shuffling back and forth between states. He was one foot out the door, ready to rest and recov
er with his own life, and then he was back again, thrust into the machinery of a group that he once wasn’t even officially a part of. And so, it’s all a matter of lens, I suppose.
My group of pals in high school were cooler than I was, by definition. They were good at basketball and I was just okay. They played football, and I watched from the stands. Still, we were cool because, at heart, they were close to what I was: a music nerd who loved ripping CDs from our computers and selling them in our school hallways for $5 a pop, less than what anyone could cop a CD of new music from the store with on release Tuesday. And I was cool enough, sure. But not most popular, by a long shot. Them hanging out with me did more for me than it did for them, at least in terms of reputation and how I could move through the treacherous world of high school. We had our bonds: staying in on Friday nights and eating pizza while talking about rap. Going to sporting events and sharing notes on girls in our class. It was the simplest of things that tethered us, but those echoed the loudest. It didn’t matter that their parents had the money to buy them expensive gear and sneakers, and that I had to work to keep up, sometimes sacrificing gas money or lunch. The things we do to stay close to the people we think will carry us through an entire lifetime . . .
We all decided to go to the same college, right in the city where we knew and loved each other first. In college, something shifted, as things often do. Because I was one of the few black kids at the college, and because of people’s fascination with that, I became of significantly more interest than I was in high school. Some of it was desired and much of it not, in retrospect. But at the time, it all felt good, or it all felt worthwhile. It felt like I was finally achieving the popularity I’d watched my friends revel in during our high school years. Now, to hang with me was the prize, and they were reaching for it. Them spending time with me or being seen with me was now more valuable. I would sacrifice plans to spend time with them in their dorm rooms, until I decided not to do that anymore. Until it seemed like too big of a burden for me to bear at this new and big school with seemingly new and endless opportunities for new friendships.
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