Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed (and sometimes Jarobi) have one of hip-hop’s most celebrated catalogs, but the group’s late 1990s output has always suffered in comparison to the trifecta of 1990s People’s Instinctive Travels and The Paths of Rhythm, 1991s The Low End Theory and 1993s Midnight Marauders. In the early 1990s, the group was on one of the best runs hip-hop has ever seen — and it proved to be a tough act to follow. But Beats Rhymes and Life holds a lot of significance for the crew from Queens, even if it took years for everyone to come around on its merits.
A Tribe Called Quest’s fourth album arrived drenched in controversy; fans were confused about the addition of Q-Tip’s cousin Consequence; Phife Dawg’s muted presence on the project seemed to indicate something was off internally — and the album’s sound was described as “dark” by those who expected the feel-good vibes of “Can I Kick It?” and “Check The Rhime.” The album’s first single “1nce Again” may have echoed that latter hit, but more often than not, Beats Rhymes and Life was a more downbeat affair overall.
There’s no denying that Beats is perhaps not quite the highwater mark of the group’s first three albums, but perhaps what’s been most detrimental to the album’s legacy is that it suffers by comparison. But what about the legacy of Beats, Rhymes and Life when taken on its own merit? The most significant stylistic shift came courtesy of the legendary J Dilla, who was an upstart producer who’d just earned raves for his work on The Pharcyde’s Labcabincalifornia a year before. The Detroit-born producer had become a favorite of contemporaries like Questlove and Q-Tip, who sought to collaborate with Dilla and formed The Ummah, a new production trio alongside him and Ali Shaheed.
A Tribe Called Quest – Stressed Out (Official HD Video) ft. Faith Evans
The Ummah’s sound was more organic and soulful than what Tribe had even done on Midnight three years prior, but it may have lacked Tribe’s hooky infectiousness and the group’s trademark enthusiasm was noticeably absent on Beats. As fans now know, Phife’s relocation to Atlanta in 1994 had driven a wedge between he and Q-Tip, who himself had converted to Islam and was undergoing a spiritual awakening. It was a lot for a group to withstand, alongside the paradigm shift that occurred in the wake of successful runs by Death Row Records and Bad Boy Entertainment — shifting hip-hop’s mainstream away from the Afrocentricity of the early 1990s to something flossier and more confrontational.
Nonetheless, time has been kind to Beats, Rhymes and Life. What was seen as a disappointment in 1996, now – with almost thirty years of hindsight – looks like an important moment in the evolution of Q-Tip, the emergence of J. Dilla and the story of A Tribe Called Quest. Beats cemented J Dilla as a force to be reckoned with, a torchbearer for the kind of sounds Q-Tip and Ali had made hallmarks of Tribe’s approach. And the album is a harbinger for solo Q-Tip; he begins playing with sounds here that he would fully unleash on his 1999 debut, Amplified. Beats, Rhymes and Life may be A Tribe Called Quest’s most controversial album, but after almost three decades, it’s more obviously an album that documents a group in transition. It would take them a while to get back to where they once belonged, but they had to endure the growing pains. Growth is never easy.
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