26.09.1996

Radical pioneers

Phil Watson reviews Beat, Rhymes and Life, by A Tribe called Quest (Jive CD)

The fact that this recent release reached the top of the American Billboard charts is in many ways a tribute to the durability of hip hop/rap music as a contemporary music form.

A Tribe Called Quest first came to attention in the late 1980s as part of the Native Tongues collective (which included De La Soul and the Jungle Brothers), which sought to counter-pose itself to the trend usually referred to as ‘gangsta rap’ with an emphasis on positivity and black consciousness, although much milder in form than the militant Public Enemy.

Their innovative debut of 1990, Peoples instinctive travels and the paths of Rhythm, with its eccentric use of samples (including the bass-line from Lou Reed’s ‘Take a walk on the wild side’ for ‘Can I Kick It?’) and Q-Tips’ off-beat rap style, meant they were instantly marked out as hip-hop pioneers. The follow up album, The low end theory, was a radical departure, fusing sparse jazz samples with hard beats to create the darkest soundscape imaginable and one that has set the tone for a variety of rap artists in subsequent years. A third work, Midnight marauders, fell somewhat between their two previous extremes - competent, but unexciting.

Which is unfortunately about the right judgement for Beats, Rhymes and Life. The production here is proficient, the samples being used to flesh out the fibres of a particular track, rather than merely as the basis for a chorus. The rapping of Phife and Q-Tips is again muscular and adept. But far too many of the songs here rely upon pounding bass and snapping snares for their main assault. As always with ATCQ, there are brilliant exceptions. ‘Phony Rappers’ is an exercise in nervous tension, whilst ‘Jam’ fuses some quirky jazz samples with cool guitar. ‘Ince Again’ repeats the effect, this time coupled with the smooth vocals of Tammy Lucas.

The career of ATCQ can in many ways be seen as exemplifying the history of hip-hop itself. Hip-hop (of which techno, jungle and house music are all children) revolutionised popular music after its appearance in the black America of the 70s. The intermeshing of various fragments (‘breaks’, later to become ‘samples’) of previously recorded music and rhymes into a collage of sound remains at the core of hip-hop music and provides its revolutionary essence.

Hip-hop artists consciously use the past to inform the present. The best are able to qualitatively change that past so that snatches of old jazz and funk records can be twisted inside and out to represent new forms. This was the method of The low end theory. Commercial viability (and hip-hop is a multi-million dollar business) consistently undermines this. Thumping beats and bass became the prerequisite, offering little in terms of lasting influence. One can only hope that A Tribe Called Quest are not permanently afflicted.