Q-Tip just released a new album and I figured it was time to make an old Tribe record the Throwback.

I was just 15 years old and heard a track called Check The Rhime. I was floored. I had no idea who A Tribe Called Quest, affectionately now know to me as simply Tribe, was. They were three guys who created this sound of rap music that was very jazzy and soulful. Q-Tip had this helium sounding voice and Phife Dawg called himself the Five Footer. DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad rounded out the group. But it wasn’t until I heard a track called Scenario that I really started to understand the difference between what was good and bad in rap music. The posse cut featured another group called Leaders Of The New School (LONS) and it was just insane. It also made Busta Rhymes and he probably owes his career to it. Scenario made me wish I could rap.

– Did you know that Bo knows this, and Bo knows that, but Bo don’t know jack, cause Bo can’t rap?
– Phife knew were he stood as he calls himself, “short, dark, and handsome”.
– Check out Reggie Noble smiling.
– Wow, how, now, wow, how, now brown cow?
– You understand the time frame when the references are Bo Jackson and Arsenio.
– Spike Lee looks absolutely no different 17 years later, except I’m not sure if he still wears the X hat.
– Q-Tip is my man but I may never fully forgive him for slobbin’ down Janet Jackson in Poetic Justice. Tupac could get it, but not Q-Tip.
– I don’t understand anything Busta says, but when you’re most well known for the line, “Rahhh rahhh like the dungeon dragon,” does it even matter?
– Young Busa Bus had mad charisma and also lacked the extra 100 pounds Busa Bus carries today.
– “Checkady-choco, the chocolate chicken.” Whenever you have a chocolate chicken, life is good.
– What’s up with the crazy hand signals Q?

I know that people say that Midnight Marauders is THE CLASSIC Tribe album. Yes, it’s great. But it doesn’t have Scenario on it. And to me, that’s their signature song and that’s why I can never go against The Low End Theory. Will they ever get back together and record again? Who knows, but even if they don’t, I’ll just throw this track on once a month and be fine.