On The Low End Theory, neither the lyrics nor the beats sounded bitter. They were widely influenced by this ideology, yet they spun the views forward for younger listeners who only knew of the past from their parents’ old record collections. The crew wore medallions and spit socially conscious rhymes that evoked the Black Liberation movement of the late 1960s. Both Tribe and De La were part of a larger collective called the Native Tongues, of which the rappers Queen Latifah and Monie Love were also members. Before they released People’s Instinctive Travels…, they appeared on the rap group De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising as featured players on the trio’s landmark project. Albans, Queens, Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Jarobi White formed A Tribe Called Quest as a jazz-leaning rap troupe meant to present a different side of hip-hop culture.
Mired in roadblocks and short on money, the band channeled their anger into the music the resulting song and album are bona fide classics.įounded in 1985 in St. The line was written amid tense dealings with their label, Jive Records, and their own changes in management. So when he delivers the line, with the beat dropped out for added emphasis, you feel a year’s worth of irritation coming to the surface. Still, they had already grown tired of the nonsense: the dishonest executives, the empty promises of fame and fortune, the hangers-on who get off on proximity to coolness. The blend felt equally familiar and distant, a gentle mix of adolescent naivety that appealed to old souls and skater kids all the same. “Industry rule number four thousand and eighty,” the rapper Q-Tip declares, “record company people are shady.” Though Tribe had only one album to their credit, 1990’s People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, the group quickly became popular behind the tracks “Bonita Applebum,” “Can I Kick It?” and “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo,” which all conveyed the band’s fondness of esoteric jazz, folk and psychedelic R&B.
Of all the potential knockout moments on A Tribe Called Quest’s sophomore album, The Low End Theory, the haymaker lands about 30 minutes in on “Check The Rhime,” the LP’s lead single.
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