“I just remember hearing music, constantly. It was all around us.” Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest isn’t talking about being anywhere near a turntable or a recording studio. He’s further back than that, reminiscing about his childhood in Jamaica, Queens. Linden Boulevard in the early-80s. He continues, “Me and Phife [Tribe’s other talented MC] heard [the Sugar Hill Gang’s] ‘Rapper’s Delight’ when it came out. But once Run-DMC started doing it, we knew we wanted to do that.”

The world can be thankful that they decided to do that, because Q-Tip — possibly the most underrated producer/MC double-threat of all time—Phife Dawg and DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad, like their idols (and neighbors, since Jamaica bordered Hollis and St. Albans) Run-DMC, blazed a new path in hip-hop in the late 80s and early 90s. Every time they hit the studio they added a serious, studious jazz edge to their supremely innovative productions.

“I was born in Queens,” says Tip [born Jonathan Davis, but he has since changed his legal name to Kamaal Fareed]. “My mother almost gave birth to me in Harlem, because that’s where I started kicking. But they got her to Queens in time.” Growing up, both Tip and Phife had musical families. Tip remembers, “There was a lot of blues and gospel in my house when I was young, and my dad was a big jazz head.” His older sister was also influential, because in the mid-1980s she began dating a member of the mighty Zulu Nation and became exposed to the deepest roots of true-school hip-hop.

Tip also recalls, of those early years: “My neighborhood had all these bands who would play all around. [Drummer] Omar Hakim had a band, [drummer] Billy Cobham, too. They’d play at Roy Wilkens Park and at the Village Door [club], around our way. I was too young to go to the clubs, but there was just music everywhere I turned.” Probably as a result of this, the producer-to-be was the definition of a musical sponge. He recalls, “I was drawn to all kinds of music as a kid. Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell. I listened to rock radio stations, too, so I heard lots of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.”

Q-Tip and Phife were from the same Queens neighborhood and were friends from a very young age. “I’ve known him since I was like three years old,” says Tip. “Phife is the one who got me into rhymin’ in the first place. We were both into hip-hop but he was the one who pushed me into MCing. I was always into books, so I guess that’s why I fell into it easily.”

The Queens-born Phife [Malik Taylor] had an arts-heavy upbringing by Trinidadian parents: his mother wrote poetry and his father was a big music fan. Calypso and reggae filled his childhood home, and Phife picked up patois and island slang, since his father played soccer with many Jamaicans. Phife says of his childhood pursuits, “Around my neighborhood, if you didn’t play basketball or rap or DJ, you were an outcast. You had to do one or the other, if not both.”

Phife went to a couple different high schools, including his freshman year at Pine Forge Academy (a Seventh-Day Adventist school located 60 miles outside of Philadelphia), then back to Springfield Gardens High School in Queens. He and Tip stayed in touch during high school, but didn’t hang out as much as they had through junior high, because of school circumstances.

After getting back from his year in Pennsylvania, Phife met up with the man who would be the fourth, and least easily-defined, member of A Tribe Called Quest — Jarobi. Phife explains, “Jarobi was originally from the Bronx and he moved to Queens when he was like 12. He was a year younger than us. He used to beatbox and I would MC. We’d battle cats out in the park.” Although Jarobi would never have a vocal presence in the group, he was important behind-the-scenes force, especially on the first album, and he would tour with them.

As his mid-teens approached, Tip faced a major turning point as an artist at the musical and geographical melting pot that was lower Manhattan’s Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers — home to future collaborators like X-Clan’s Brother J, the Jungle Brothers, and his future Tribe-mate Ali Shaheed Muhammad. Tip says, “Going to Murry Bergtraum was a big influence on me, in one way just because it let me get out of Queens. It was just a whole new thing for me, and there was just so much crazy stuff going on there. The first person I met there was Brother J, he was just there rhyming in the lunchroom. There was so much talent there. It was just a fly-ass school.” Tip graduated in 1988, with a specialization in computer science.

Aside from his contact with Ali Shaheed, Q-Tip’s association with two other Bergtraum students, Mike G and Afrika Baby Bam of the Jungle Brothers, was the one that really started his career. The group was signed to Idlers/Warlock Records in 1987, and released their Straight Out The Jungle album on the label in 1988. Tip wrote and performed on their songs “Black Is Black” and [a non-album cut] “The Promo.” It was his first time in a recording studio and he soaked up the experiences. “I also helped mix the song ‘Straight Out The Jungle,’” Tip adds. “And those guys used some beats that I had found, too. I was on that album a good amount.”

“I never really looked at hip-hop as a career,” Tip explains. “I just loved doing it. I guess that I kind of knew, though, because I didn’t really apply to any colleges. I went to City College for a couple of weeks and dropped out. Hip-hop was always a dream, but being around the Jungle Brothers and seeing them do it, that made it more of a reality to me.”

Going back to the pre-Jungle Brothers days, Tip had also hooked up with Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn resident DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad during their freshman year in high school, and the two quickly started working on music together. Tip recalls, “I met Ali through Afrika [of the Jungle Brothers] and I would go to his [Ali’s] place in Bed-Stuy to work on demos. Me and Ali did the demo for ‘Bonita Appelbaum’ [which appeared on Tribe’s first album, in 1989] around sophomore year in high school.”

Regarding his future rhyme partner during their high school years, Tip says: “Me and Phife went to grade school together, but in high school we didn’t see each other much, because he went to a school in Philadelphia [actually in Pine Forge, outside of Philly] and then to Springfield High School in Queens. But I was always in touch with him, and was telling him that he had to come by our school and meet these people, because things were popping off there.”

The final, and most mysterious, part of the Tribe puzzle was Jarobi. He rarely rhymed with the group, and didn’t officially produce, but he was an important part of the crew nonetheless. Tip says, “After freshman year in high school, Phife was rhyming with this kid around the way in Queens, and Jarobi was that guy’s beatboxer. We’d all hang out, so I met Jarobi when we was like 14.”

Phife says, of Jarobi, “He was down with us when we started, but he was basically always into the culinary arts. When we got signed to Jive he was attending New York Tech [New York Institute of Technology] in Central Islip [Long Island] for culinary arts. He toured with us a lot on the first album but eventually he chose his other career instead of running with us in the music thing. He still works with me today, producing and going on the road with me.”

By their junior year in high school, things were starting to come together for what would be A Tribe Called Quest. Tip and Ali originally called themselves Quest, but Afrika from the Jungle Brothers suggested they expand it to A Tribe Called Quest. And by 1987 the four-man crew was working on music together more regularly, and had even added a drummer named Sha-Boogie to the mix.

Tip explains, “Originally there were five of us [including Jarobi], come to think of it. Eventually Sha dropped out of the group, but the rest of us stuck with it.” He continues, “We rented a rehearsal space in Manhattan called Giant Studios, and we’d practice there for a couple hours, on Saturdays. It was actually kind of pathetic, now that I actually think about it [laughs]. My sister was dating [producer] Skeff Anselm back then and he was in the Zulu Nation and knew Jazzy Jay, so Jay came down one time to check us out. He basically said, ‘Um, keep working on it.’ [laughs]”

And work on it they did. Throughout their tenure at Murry Bergtraum, Tip and Ali continued to hone their 4-track skills in Bed-Stuy. Tip says, “I would do beats, and Ali would put cuts on them. By senior year [1988], I was doing shows with the Jungle Brothers, after their [first] album came out.” Tip also continued to work on his vocal style and presence, with Phife by his side whenever they could find time to link up. Q-Tip remembers, “Phife was always the battle rapper, he would take what was happenin’ on the street and rhyme about it. And he was a great freestyler as well. My shit was always more cerebral, and the combo always worked really well. We’d always make up routines that would emulate Run-DMC.”

Aside from the Jungle Brothers connection, an important side of Tip’s musical development came after meeting Long Island’s De La Soul. The JBs, De La and Tribe would form the nucleus of what would be called the Native Tongues movement, which would catch the hip-hop world’s ear after De La’s monumental 3 Feet High And Rising album hit in 1989. Tribe would be the third of the three to release an album, and they rode the Native Tongues wave to national recognition. Tip says, “We did a show with De La Soul in Roy Wilkens Park [in Jamaica, Queens] on July 4, in 1988. The Jungle Brothers had just met De La up in Boston at a show a couple days before, and we all just clicked. So I started hanging out with De La after that.”

Phife remembers, “The Native Tongues thing happened through Q-Tip. When Tip and the Jungle Brothers met up with De La it just seemed like they had known each other for years. Everybody was on the same vibe and that’s how it was born. We were just kids back then, and it was just a family affair, not like a marketing thing. It’s like in elementary school, on the weekends you have a sleepover. But the sleepover with Native Tongues was in a recording studio instead. People would just roll by other peoples’ sessions and we’d be in there all night, eating Chinese food and working. It was just a natural thing, we had fun being around each other and that was really the main thing.”

Tip was at many of the recording sessions for 3 Feet High [he was featured on several songs, including the single “Buddy,” and Tip says he co-produced the song “Description”] at Manhattan’s Calliope Studios, and this experience proved to be the final schooling he needed to shine on his own. He remembers, “I’d be in there, mesmerized by all the equipment. I’d even stay after their sessions were over and mess around, figuring stuff out.”

Being at a real studio like Calliope [the Jungle Brothers recorded at Tony D’s cozier TTO Studios, in Coney Island] was the chance that Tip was waiting for. He says, “At the time, in 1988 and 1989, my original productions were all on pause-tapes, when I wasn’t messing with Ali’s 4-track. So I’d just show up at Calliope with a bag of tapes of stuff I had done, trying to figure out how to make them come alive.” With the help of engineer Shane Faber, Tip started learning equipment like Emu’s SP-1200 and Akai’s S-950 samplers. He adds, “[Queens-based producer] Large Professor also showed me a lot of production stuff at the time, and I expanded on what he taught me.”

Considering the high-profile company Q-Tip was keeping, it wasn’t long before labels took notice. He remembers, “After the De La album came out and all the hype it got, a lot of people wanted to hear our demo. DJ Red Alert was managing us at the time and he shopped a demo we had with four or five songs on it. Geffen, Def Jam, Atlantic and Jive all wanted to sign us. We went with Jive, because they just seemed more interested.”

A Tribe Called Quest’s first album, Peoples’ Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm, came out in 1990 on Jive, and was a critical success, eventually going gold on the strength of singles like “Bonita Appelbum” and “Can I Kick It?”

“That album was just a lot of fun,” says Tip. “I had all these ideas in my head and I was just letting them out. It wasn’t too cerebral, it was about emotions and colors. We didn’t work too hard or toil when we were recording, it was just about getting that feeling down on tape. The label was happy, it sold well, and we had a buzz out there.”

Tip details the production duties on the first album, which he says were the same for the first several Tribe releases: “I would do all of the music, basically, and the other guys would be the sounding board, and we’d improve tracks from their suggestions.” He notes that Ali Shaheed produced “Push It Along” from Peoples’ Instinctive Travels. Phife says, “I was being ignorant on that first album, that’s why I was only on a couple of tracks. I was hardly around, not like I should have been.”

“I wouldn’t say that Phife was being ignorant,” Tip replies. “He was just running around, doing his thing, being 19 years-old. I was in the studio every day, but it wouldn’t bother me if he wasn’t there. He was my man and I was going to hold him down. We all helped stitch that album together.”

“Everybody had their hand in the production, one way or another,” explains Phife. “Tip had the massive record collection, and he used to dig for records all the time. We’d go on tour and right before sound-check, Tip would be driving around looking for records. Ali did a lot of the programming, and played any live stuff that needed to be played, pretty much. And Tip did everything else. There were times that I might write a paragraph or two for Tip, or he might write 16-bars for me. It was really a group thing, and we didn’t have any kind of basic format. We just went with how we felt at the moment. I do beats now, but back then I left that to Tip and Ali. I just enjoyed their production so much that it wouldn’t make any sense for me to mess up something that was good.”

The group continued to feed off the artistic energy of the Native Tongues camp, which grew to include Queen Latifah, Monie Love and the Black Sheep. By later 1990 it was time to think about their second full-length. Tribe had grown even more as artists and people, and their sound was sure to reflect this.

Phife remembers, “Once we got ready to do The Low End Theory, we knew that it was do or die. I felt that way, at least. The first album was critically-acclaimed, so we had a buzz out there, but we knew everything had to be correct to really make it hit like we wanted. Management, record label, distribution, everything.” On the management side, they went with industry up-and-comer (and then Jungle Brothers road-manager) Chris Lighty, who had been at RUSH Management and was just starting his Violator Management company.

Tip says of his pre-Low-End mindset: “I felt like there were even more possibilities with the second album, with all that I had learned and how I wanted things to be, sonically. I just went to another level when I was getting ready to do Low End Theory. I wouldn’t say it was ‘do or die.’ It was more like: OK, now watch what we can do.” He continues, “I was definitely on another level at that point. I felt it and I knew it. I was chopping beats differently than other people were back then. The [second] album was like a project. A show. And everybody was invited to watch. The first album was about color, and Low End Theory was more about technique. We were confident working on Peoples’ Instinctive Travels, but by the time we got to Low End it was like, ‘Lights out, good night.’ We just knew it was something special.”

Phife admits, “On the first album I would have rather hung out with my boys on the street and got my hustle on rather than going into the studio. I really didn’t take it seriously. I wasn’t even on the contract for the first album, I was even thinking that me and Jarobi might have our own group, and so we were more like back-ups for Tip and Ali. But they really wanted me to come through and do my thing, and towards the end of the first album, doing shows and such, I saw how the fans really liked us. At that point I knew that it could be something big. The difference between the two albums is that on Low End Theory I was focused, and that just made it that much better.”

Working at Battery Studios in Manhattan with engineer, technical advisor and all-around recording guru Bob Power [Tip points to Power as a significant behind-the-scenes influence on the group’s sound], Tip and Phife recall the album taking six to eight months to record, versus the three months it had taken for their first. And despite Jive Records having offices in the same building as Battery, the label never got any sneak peaks at what Tribe was up to. Tip says, “We would never let the record label hear what we were doing. We didn’t need anybody giving us their critique on our music. And like I said [on “Check The Rhime”], record company people are shady [laughs].”

Phife also remembers their self-sufficiency: “We were always our own A&Rs, we wouldn’t let Jive come into the studio, which isn’t easy because Battery is one floor down from the Jive offices! They’d try to come downstairs and see what was goin’ on, but we’d always be real discreet about what we was doing. They wouldn’t hear anything until we wanted them to hear it, and that did make them mad sometimes. But in the end they were definitely happy, because they knew what we had, and they knew it was hot.” Tip adds, “Jive was really big on letting us just be who we were, and that was pretty important, looking back. You can’t find that today.”

The album, considering its title, featured basslines front and center, but had many reasons for being called The Low End Theory. Tip explains, “At the time, there were some things that were happening in hip-hop, sonically, that I wanted to expand on, especially with the bottom. For example, I loved Public Enemy, but I felt that sometimes their mixes didn’t have enough dynamics to them. All their sounds were on the same floor: bass, drums, guitars. I wanted to stack things on different levels, I wanted sounds to have their own place in any given song. Like with Pink Floyd, I loved that group, and their music and mixes were all about dynamics. So I would always explain how dynamic I wanted things to be by telling Bob [Power]: ‘I want this to be more at the bottom, at the low end.’ I guess it was from a lack of articulation, but it got the job done. I’d always say that, and that’s where the title came from.”

In addition to Q-Tip’s next-level production and groundbreaking flow and lyrics on The Low End Theory, the entire group stepped up, especially Phife. Tip says, “Phife was so amazing, so crazy on that album. He just went for his. He was the fire-starter and he always brought that edge. Back then and still today, when I make a beat, I always envision how Phife is going to sound on it. His tone over my beats is always such a great contrast.”

According to Tip, Ali Shaheed didn’t produce any full tracks per-se, but “He did the cuts and had suggestions about how tracks could be improved. He was a much-needed sounding board for everything I was doing, because he understood everything from a DJ perspective.”

Phife laughs when recalling Q-Tip’s infamous perfectionism (which Tip himself admits): “Tip being such a perfectionist is good and bad. Because sometimes when a track’s blazing hot, he might not feel it and might overdo it. Ali and myself or Chris [Lighty] would be like, ‘It’s hot, leave it alone!’”

Another part of the album’s sonic impact was the sequencing and Tip’s philosophy about “blending” songs together. He says, “With the sequencing, I definitely wanted everything to blend together. De La [Soul] had all those skits and I wanted things on our album to end cold, and go right into the next song, bam. No space between songs.”

Phife mentions another part of their sequencing philosophy: “Doug E Fresh told us way back in the day that sequencing was very, very important, and I’ve never forgotten that. We always kept that in mind with all our albums and we always tried out different sequences.”

Interestingly, Q-Tip says that he didn’t like to make videos for Tribe songs, despite the fact that some of the offerings on Low End Theory are among hip-hop’s finest of all time (notably “Scenario” and “Check The Rhime”). He says, “I don’t like videos, even to this day. I think that they take away the mystery of a song. It makes the relationship between the public and the artist a passive one. Our videos were OK, but I like to leave the imagination in there.”

Regarding the album cover, which is one of the most distinctive of the 90s, if not all-time, Tip recalls: “I wanted to do something a little risqué and I was fighting with the label about it. I wanted [the cover model] to be Naomi Campbell, naked, with all the red, black and green paint all over her, with a Tribe logo on her ass. I guess that was kind of cocky [laughs]. We couldn’t get her, of course. I don’t think that the label even tried. But we got another model to do the same thing. We wanted a shot where we were all walking in Times Square with her, but that was a bit much, too. And I wanted a white background for the shot, but they flipped it and made it black. I liked how it came out, though. Basically I was just trying to go for the new Ohio Players type of shit.”

“After the responses came back and they were all very positive, it really did feel like we had arrived as a group,” says Q-Tip. “A lot of our albums have been ahead of their time, including our first and third records. But I think that Low End Theory was one of the most on-time records we ever did. And I think fans embraced it because of that.”

He continues, “At that time, it really broke us out of the Native Tongues stereotype, and it made people take us very, very seriously, especially after they had heard a song like [the humorous 1990 single] ‘I Left My Wallet In El Segundo.’ Most of all I’m just glad that people consider it a classic musical album.”

“Low End kicked the door down, and knocked it off its hinges,” adds Phife. “In this game, timing is everything, and the timing of Low End Theory was perfect.”

Tracks, listed in order of original LP sequence

Excursions

Q-Tip: I took the original bassline, which was in 3/4 time, and I put a beat onto the last measure, to make it 4/4. I made the drums underneath smack, so it had that big sound. And I put a reverse [Roland TR-] 808 [drum machine] behind it, right before the beat actually kicks in. I loved that Last Poets sample on there, too.

Buggin’ Out

Q-Tip: The video for that song was all right, but I didn’t think it was that amazing. I’ve always considered videos to be a necessary evil. In some of my lyrics on there, I was talking about the trend of R&B artists at the time taking on hip-hop personas, to get more of an edge, I guess. It always seemed to me that that was done out of commerce than out of genuine interest. It was just the thing to do. It started happening the other way around later on, with hip-hop artists having R&B guests on their songs, around 1995 or 1996. That whole Bad Boy [Records] era. Back then it always bugged me.

Butter

Phife: I wrote that before the first album was done, actually, but I had never used those rhymes. I changed up a couple things here and there from my original lyrics. The only reason I got “Butter” [as a solo track] was because I argued about it. That was my opportunity right there. I said if [Q-Tip’s] going to do five solo tracks then I should do that many, too. But that wouldn’t be much of a group album if there were 10 solo tracks. Tip was looked at as the leader of Tribe and that’s all good, but I wanted some burn, too. I wouldn’t have minded having one more solo shot on that record, but I can’t complain too much, because that album was hot.

Q-Tip: I’d always ask Phife if he wanted to be on any songs and he’d say yes or no. “Butter” was the one song that we argued about, because I wanted to be on it. He had to fight for that one. That’s probably my favorite overall track on the whole album, honestly. I gave in to Phife on our argument because there was some girl in there yelling at me to let him do a solo, so I was like, “All right!” Some of his rhymes on there were older, I remembered them when he started kicking them in the studio.

Verses From the Abstract

Phife: That’s got to be Tip’s best solo work, other than [Midnight Marauders’] “Sucka Nigga.” That’s just a killer. Ron Carter, the jazz bassist, is on there, playing live. He was a really cool guy.

Q-Tip: About getting Ron Carter on there, Sophia Chang worked at Jive and had worked at Atlantic before that. When she was at Atlantic she did a record with Ron, and when she told me that I was like, “I’d love to get Ron on a track!” It made a lot of sense, and I was surprised I hadn’t thought of it before, honestly. He was a great guy, we had a really good conversation. He was definitely interested in what we were doing with hip-hop or I don’t think that he would have done the track for us. That’s nice of Phife to say about my verse on there, but I don’t think that’s one of my own favorite verses on the album. I guess that it is one of my less abstract rhymes, despite the name of the song. Vinia Mojica is singing on there. I met her back in 1987 or 1988, walking down the street in New York. I was like, “Who are you?” And aside from being beautiful, she wound up being a great singer.

Rap Promoter

Phife: That’s one of my favorite tracks on the album. It’s just about getting jerked [ripped-off by promoters] at shows. Most of the things we were talking about on Low End Theory were learning experiences from the first album, and “Rap Promoter” was definitely about that. I can’t remember anything specific, but I do remember one time this promoter ran out with the dough ’cause he knew that he didn’t have enough to pay us. They’ll try and get away with murder if you let ’em, you know what I mean? It’s the American way, unfortunately.

Scenario

Q-Tip: There are so many stories about that song. We did a whole other song with Leaders of the New School for the album, but it never made it on there. I met those guys around the time of our first album because Chuck D was fucking around with them. He put them together and named them and all that. I was 18 or 19 at that time and Busta [Rhymes] was like 16. We did two versions of the “album version,” [of “Scenario”] with that same music. The one that made it to the album was the first version we did. Then we made a second one, later, with [their manager] Chris Lighty, Pos [from De La Soul] and one of the guys from Black Sheep. Jarobi was even on a third version we did! [laughs]. We didn’t know which one to use. We wanted to get everybody on there, but it was still obvious which one was the best, and we went with that one for the final album version. On the remix [which appears on the single], an MC named Kid Hood is the first guy rhyming on there. He was a guy that I met through a mutual friend. I remember that Leaders of the New School didn’t really want him on there, but I did. I loved Kid Hood’s rhyme, it was like on some pre-Redman shit. He could have been right up in that lane in the future, but two days after we recorded him, he got murdered. That was the only recording that he ever did. If I had to choose, I think I like the remix better than the album version. And yeah, that video was fun, sure.

Phife: That was one of the first tracks, and also the last track we did. The original version of that actually had Pos from De La, Dres and Long from Black Sheep on it as well, and even Chris Lighty, our manager. There was like nine or ten people on it and we was just buggin’ out. It was way too long, and Chris is not an MC, he’s a business dude. No one was really wack on it, though, it was dope. It was just too long. I guarantee you that Pos has it somewhere. He saves everything. I don’t think I ever told anybody this, but I wanted to go first because a lot of DJs cut the record [short, before it’s over] and whoever is second to last might not get heard [laughs]. So I was like, “Fuck that, I’m going first! Niggas is gonna hear me!” [laughs] I really wanted to set it off, too, because it seemed like everybody else’s voice was stronger, in a way. So, if I’m up front I can set it off and let everybody else bang. And I killed it. I think everybody killed on that album version. And none of the guys from the original version cared that they didn’t make it on that final version. I would say that that song is one of the best posse cuts ever, with [Marley Marl & Juice Crew’s] “The Symphony” and [EPMD with Redman and K-Solo’s] “Headbanger.”

The Infamous Date Rape

Phife: Q-Tip came up with the title for that. It was just something that was happenin’ a lot, at the time [celebrities getting accused of rape]. It never happened to us personally, no no no. If she says no, then aiight, beat it.

Check The Rhime

Q-Tip: That song took a minute to develop. And I don’t really know why we spelled “rhyme” like we did [laughs]. I just liked fucking up words, doing lower-case and upper-case where they didn’t belong. I also take full responsibility for making up the word “vivrant” [laughs]. When I first did that song I had just discovered how to chop beats up in certain ways. The beat was Grover Washington’s “Hydra,” and EPMD had used it [on the song “Underground” in 1990], but I knew that I could get more out of it, by getting the kicks and the snares out, to make the drums more cohesive. That was a really early version of beat-chopping that I used on there. The original version was just the drum beat and I can’t remember what else was on there. I’d have to go back and listen to the reels. With the video for that song, that cleaners we were on top of [Nu-Clear Drive-In Cleaners, on Linden Boulevard in St. Albans] was just a staple in our neighborhood. I saw that U2 video where they were on top of that building in LA and it was all tall and shit, and I was like, “Fuck that! [voice gets very deep and sarcastically macho]. We’re gonna do it on top of a building in the ‘hood!’” The day we did the video was a lot of fun, it was like the hottest day of the year, and then there was a thunderstorm and the wind was blowing all around. There were tons of people, coming from all over Queens. People were out there hanging out, barbequing, shooting dice.

Phife: Originally we did that song to a different beat. It was hot, too. We didn’t title it at first, but as soon as we put the horns on there, we just named it ‘Check The Rhime.” The original version would have come across dark, almost like a Mobb Deep joint. Those back-and-forth lyrics with Tip and I on there definitely came very naturally. We grew up together. When we’re on stage, he knows what I’m gonna do before I do it and vice-versa. And Ali is like the referee behind the turntables, making sure we’re doing it right. Ali gets the vibe the most, by being back there, watching both of us. That video was done down the block from my grandmother’s house and a block or two from Q-Tip’s mother’s house.

Everything Is Fair

Q-Tip: I was kind of speaking about a specific woman with those lyrics. It was a story I had heard about and seen, the different images on there. Skeff [Anselm] produced that one as well. He was working with Brand Nubian at the time and he was around in the studio a lot, so I was like, “Yo, throw us a beat!” And he did.

Phife: Skeff was definitely a more dance-oriented producer. Straight up and down, he had some hot, funky shit, and that’s why we wanted his stuff on the album.

Jazz (We’ve Got)

Phife: That was our second single. I talk about MCs dissing me on there, but nobody ever did a dis record on me or anything. Still, you always gotta keep an ear out for people talking shit about you. When I said, “Produced and arranged by the four-man crew” on there, I was talkin’ about Skeff Anselm. He’s the other dude with the hat in the video for that. He used to be in the studio with us all the time, whether he was doin’ a track for us or not.

Q-Tip: I was hanging out with Pete Rock and Large Professor and we were talking about doing a record together. Pete had come up with that beat, but the song we were going to do never materialized. So I asked Pete if he was going to use the track, and if I could maybe trade him something for it. I already had the record he used, but I wanted to get his permission. He was like, “Yeah, go ahead.” I don’t think I ever traded him back for it, so I guess I still owe him! When it came to hip-hop and jazz, the work we were doing was a unique opportunity, to combine both of them, like the way we used Ron Carter on “Verses From The Abstract.” Both musics came from the black underclass, and both are very expressive. There were so many similarities, and that made it even better to sample it and rhyme over it. I thought Phife was talking about Jarobi when he mentions the “four man crew.” Although Jarobi wasn’t around much on the second album.

Show Business

Q-Tip: Skeff Anselm produced that. His style was definitely very Strong City [the label owned by legendary DJ Jazzy Jay], it had that Jazzy Jay skip to it. We got Skeff on the record because, contrary to what people think, I didn’t want the album to be all about me. I wanted it to breathe, and for other people to come in. I mean, shit, I brought in [producer] Jay Dee [aka J Dilla] later on. Tribe meant what it said, it was a community. As for Brand Nubian, we had a song called “Georgie Porgie” that we did with them. Puba was on it. It was about a kid who grew up in the ‘hood and wound up being gay. We played it for the label [Jive] and they felt that it was a little too … strong. So we all decided not to put it on the album, because we didn’t want to offend anybody. Puba got mad and didn’t want to do another track, so that’s why he’s not on there. We used the same beat. We were definitely influenced by Brand Nubian and loved those guys. Puba was always dope.

Phife: That was with Brand Nubian, we’d always run into them at clubs like Power House and the Daddy’s Night that Puffy used to throw at Red Zone. I don’t know who Tip would tell you that he got a lot from as an MC, but for me personally, Grand Puba was my favorite nigga of all time, with KRS and LL. Puba was mad witty and sarcastic, all at the same time, and mad funny, and that’s how I always wanted to come across when I rhymed. With the content of the song, we had seen some real fucked up things in the industry and we just had the idea to spill it on a record. Everybody looks at it as entertainment, but there’s seriousness to it. That was definitely a thought-out concept record for us.

What?

Q-Tip: That was done kind of midway through the sessions. The label wanted that song as the first single. It was between that and “Check The Rhime.” I’m glad that it went the way it did. Things definitely would have been different if “What?” was the first single.

Excerpted from Brian Coleman’s Check The Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies, available now from Random House. Order online from GoodRoadGoods.

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