FEATURE:
Can I Kick It?
A Tribe Called Quest’s People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm at Thirty-Five
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THIS anniversary feature…
IN THIS PHOTO: A Tribe Called Quest. From left to right, Jarobi White, Q-Tip, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Phife Dawg/PHOTO CREDIT: Ernie Paniccioli/Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Is about a remarkable debut album. A Tribe Called Quest’s People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm turns thirty-five on 17th April. I wanted to spend some time discussing the incredible debut from the Hip-Hop group. I guess People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm was quite radically at the time. When it came out in 1990, its laidback lyrics and use of samples was not common in Hip-Hop. Similar to an album that came out a year previous: Del La Soul’s phenomenal debut, 3 Feet High and Rising. For their debut, A Tribe Called Quest began recording sessions for People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm in late-1989 at Calliope Studios. It was completed in early-1990. In terms of legacy, not only did People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm widen Hip-Hop’s vocabulary and was forward-thinking in terms of its use of samples. All these years later, the album has inspired so many other artists. From Ms. Lauryn Hill, D’Angelo and J Dilla, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm has made a huge impact. I am going to end with a review for the twenty-fifth anniversary release (2015). I am starting out with a couple of features for one of the most influential and stunning Hip-Hop albums ever. One of the best debut albums ever. I want to start out with a 2015 feature from Legacy Recordings. They were marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. It arrived at a time when there was a diversification of Hip-Hop. Even if Del La Soul and their Daisy Age sound was criticised by some, it did offer something more thoughtful and gentle. Not that this sound lacked impact and power. Many expected groups like De La Soul to have the same sort of attitude and sound as Public Enemy and the sound of West Coast Rap. More political and cutting. A Tribe Called Quest arrived in 1990 and provided new colours and layers. Maybe their lyrics sound out of place now and have not aged as well as other Hip-Hop groups/albums. However, it is clear how important People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm is:
“But, before they could create legendary hip-hop, they had to locate each other. Q-Tip and Phife did that in 3rd grade, as Jonathan Davis and Malik Taylor, at the Linden Seventh-day Adventist School in Laurelton, Queens. Perhaps the fact that both were transplants drew them together; that they’d both recently changed schools after getting into fights at their former institutions. Their connection was instant. “He was just a funny dude to me,” recalls Q-Tip. “Funny as hell. He just had everybody dyin’.”
Of course, this being the late ’70s, hip-hop was becoming the lingua franca of young Black men. This also bonded them. Tip had discovered the culture at the age of 6, not only as he was dragged to park jams by a sister twice his age, but as the rowdy motorcycle club next to their home blasted beats by night.
Phife’s intro came around age 8, while staying with his grandmother. (He did this throughout elementary school while his parents worked.) A friend from across the street deejayed, and kept tapes of the Cold Crush Brothers, Funky Four + 1, Treacherous 3, on PLAY. “I latched on everything he had. I used to say everyone’s raps. Then, I started making up my own words. And Q-Tip was my best friend, so we started doing it together.”
Around 12, Phife met Jarobi, and introduced him to Q-Tip. Then, in high school — that is, the Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers, in lower Manhattan — Q-Tip would meet Ali Shaheed, and connect him with the others. The quartet was now complete.
Taking the name Quest — it won out over “The Crush Connection,” says Phife — the crew labored to put together a demo. Four tracks — “Funky Fire,” “Routine,” “Bonita Applebum,” and “Pubic Enemy” — soon made their way out to the labels. Needless to say, the companies loved what they heard, and the group was immediately signed. Right?
Nope. The feedback came in both fast and furious. “They totally just shitted on us,” admits Jarobi. “Tip was ‘bad,’ Phife was…something, and I was ‘just horrible.’ All the bad superlatives you can think of (laughs), that was us. They hated us.”
Quest were still in their mid-teens, at that point. Recording People’s was about three years away. However, today, Jarobi chalks up the reviews, not to their youth, but to the labels’ un-youth. “They weren’t ready.” He explains, stressing that, up until then, “there was a more…mechanic sound to hip-hop; not as melodic as the music that we’d started making.” The era’s dominant rhythms were all “straight 4/4, 808 drums, and James Brown samples, everything on the one, very straightforward. It wasn’t until De La, Jungle, us, and a couple of other groups came in that the music started getting movement.”
But that didn’t happen right away. Engineer Bob Power, with Dr. Shane Faber, oversaw the People’s Instinctive Travels recording sessions at the now defunct Calliope Studios. Power says that rap artists were facing fairly widespread resistance at the mixing console, too.
Because of sampling, “hip-hop used different techniques of recording,” he notes, “and different source materials, and the sonic ethic was very different than conventional engineering at the time.” When the culture’s creators showed up at most studios — rough-talking Black teenagers rocking skullies, Carhartts, Tims, and lugging crates of vinyl, their rhyme notebooks, 40s, pagers, and blunts — “the white, male boys’ club of the engineering establishment saw them and said, ‘I don’t understand how these people are dressed, I don’t understand how they talk, and that’s not music,’” he admits, adding, “I think, to some degree, there may have been an unconscious factor of racism involved.”
Perhaps, Power states, because “Calliope was one of the cheapest studios in town, and the engineering staff there, didn’t ever really say, ‘Oh, that’s wrong, that’s not the way to do things,’” they won over hip-hop’s intelligentsia. “Jungle in one room, recording,” recalls Phife, of the period. “De La Soul in another room, recording. Latifah in another room, recording. Prince Paul,” alternately with De La, or his band, Stetsasonic. “Everybody was there.”
As for the process of making the album, says Q-Tip, “it was exciting. We were kinda left to our own devices, pretty much. It was just a great environment, conducive for creating.”
When I ask Tip what he means, he’s reflective. “When we were in the studio, we didn’t have the cell phones, we didn’t have the internet, we didn’t have a whole bunch of things to tear at us.
“When we got to the studio, the specific job was to make music. There was no TV in there. It was all instruments, all speakers. It was just music. Eat food, listen to music, that’s it. If there was a phone call, somebody would come in from the office and say, ‘There’s a phone call,’ and usually, it would be for the adult engineer. It was just great. And I really believe that’s how it should be, when you’re cre-a-ting.” He sounds out each syllable for emphasis, before summing up. “The process, for People’s Instinctive Travels, to me, was utopia.”
If it was perfection for Tribe, it would prove to be even more so for a number of hardy souls. These are the ones who, on the strength of the singles and amazing word of mouth, ponied up to the registers on Tuesday, April 10, 1990 and bought the premiere album by this untried group.
As a result, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm reached #91 on Billboard’s Top 200, and #23 on the magazine’s Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums chart. “I Left My Wallet In El Segundo” and “Can I Kick It?” both became Top Ten Hot Rap singles, hitting #9 and #8, respectively, with “Bonita Applebum” achieving Top 5 status, at #4. Finally, People’s Instinctive Travels has been certified gold, having sold over 500,000 copies.
Today, many consider the first time they heard the album a personal, life turning point. Twenty-five years after its 1990 release, it is widely recognized as the seminal statement by artists who are now, unquestionably, legends; their names carved indelibly in the great walls of hip-hop history and culture. We hear their massive influence whenever we listen to the music of Common, Talib Kweli, The Fugees, D’Angelo, Mos Def, Erykah Badu, and Kanye West, among numerous others. And it all started here, on this album. Clearly, Jarobi, Phife, Ali, and Tip did something incredibly right”.
I will get to a review soon. First, Albumism explored People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm as part of a series that looked at one-hundred dynamic debut albums. Published in 2017, they showed a lot of love for a work of genius that has no filler at all. A Tribe Called Quest carried this debut momentum into their subsequent albums. A force to be reckoned with:
“Released in the spring of 1990, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm has admittedly gained more respect as time has passed. But it still resides in the shadows of its two immediate successors (1991’s The Low End Theory and 1993’s Midnight Marauders), relegated to a role akin to the forgotten first child within the broader context of A Tribe Called Quest’s recorded output. Which is perplexing, at least to my ears. For while the album may be understated relative to its more universally lauded counterparts, it is exceptional in its own right, and one of the most imaginative debut albums ever recorded, hip-hop or otherwise.
Harboring neither grand schemes nor lofty delusions of crossover pop grandeur, Tribe’s debut didn’t purport to be anything other than what it is: a cleverly unorthodox and sonically inventive celebration of life, love, and music. Following in the creative footsteps of Jungle Brothers’ Straight Out the Jungle (1988) and Done by the Forces of Nature (1989), as well as De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising (1989), People’s Instinctive Travels embodied and expanded upon the Native Tongues collective’s trademark virtues of playfulness, positivity, and pride. Equal measures whimsy and wit, the album exudes an unparalleled bohemian cool, Afrocentric sophistication, and admirable humility, all of which combine for an irresistibly vibrant and soul-affirming listening experience.
Sonically, the album is an intoxicating mélange of melodic sounds and expertly incorporated samples, primarily culled from 1970s jazz, soul and funk records, which together provide the perfect canvas for Q-Tip and the late great Phife Dawg to flex their skills. Clocking in just shy of eight minutes and riding along a sweet Grover Washington, Jr. sample (“Loran’s Dance”), the album’s first track “Push It Along” is an epic way for Tribe to introduce themselves. I’ve always loved Q-Tip’s opening verse, which formally announces Tribe’s noble musical vision and humble disposition: “Q-Tip is my title, I don’t think that it’s vital / For me to be your idol, but dig this recital / If you can’t envision a brother who ain’t dissing / Slinging this and that, cause this and that was missing / Instead, it’s been injected, the Tribe has been perfected / Oh yes, it’s been selected, the art makes it protected / Afrocentric living, Africans be givin’ / A lot to the cause ’cause the cause has been risen.”
Other highlights abound. A document of an impromptu road trip gone awry, “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo was Tribe’s first-ever single and video that cemented their unconventional approach to songcraft and penchant for compelling storytelling. “Bonita Applebum,” the album’s second and arguably most recognizable single, is Q-Tip’s endearing plea to the object of his infatuation, articulated over a fantastic sample of RAMP‘s “Daylight.” The combination of Q-Tip & Phife’s inspired rhymes, the playful call-and-response chorus, and ingenious lifting of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” and Dr. Lonnie Smith‘s “Spinning Wheel” on “Can I Kick It?” coalesce for one unforgettable track.
A wonderful ode to an idyllic day spent in the comfort of close friends, it’s damn near impossible to resist bopping your head and tapping your feet to “After Hours,” a feel-good anthem that samples Sly & The Family Stone and Richard Pryor. A tough call, but my personal favorite happens to be “Footprints,” an addictive groove with Q-Tip’s fervent rhymes gliding across a harmonious mix of samples courtesy of Donald Byrd, The Cannonball Adderley Quintet, Stevie Wonder, and Public Enemy”.
I will end with a review from Pitchfork for People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. I have compared A Tribe Called Quest to De La Soul. In the sense of the delivery. However, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm is full of conscious rap that they carried into future albums. However, like many of their more energised and ‘angrier’ peers, there was something distinct about the delivery and vibe of A Tribe Called Quest:
“Approaching A Tribe Called Quest's seminal debut in 2015 is a loaded venture. The Queens, N.Y. trio (and sometimes "y" quartet, counting Jarobi) is one of the most revered acts in hip-hop—and with good reason. As part of the Afrocentric and innovative Native Tongues collective—which included De La Soul, Jungle Brothers, Queen Latifah, Black Sheep, and others—they created and refined a template for '90s hip-hop that was street-astute, worldly, and more inspirational than aspirational.
Even without the Native Tongues' legacy, Tribe's heritage is not a light one. There's no stretch in saying that, without A Tribe Called Quest, the biggest rap artists of this year—Drake, Future, and Kendrick Lamar—would not exist as they do. Drake would not be Drake without Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreak; Kanye would not be Kanye without his Tribe influences. Without Tribe, the Dungeon Family—birthplace of Outkast, Goodie Mob, and Future—arguably does not exist. And the improvisational looseness of Kendrick's opus is unthinkable without the innumerable branches of jazz and hip-hop sprouting from Tribe's experimentation, which differed significantly from the cooler jazz-sample leanings of Stetsasonic and Gang Starr. There's no Mos Def, no J. Cole, no Common, no J Dilla, no Digable Planets, no Neptunes, and no Clipse as we know them. Tribe is that important. And this album—the first ever to receive a perfect "5 Mic" rating from The Source magazine—is where it all began.
Arriving a year after De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm showed Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and Jarobi to be whimsical yet grounded in reality. They weren't heady, hermetic, and puzzling like De La; in comparison to 3 Feet High's astounding range and informative sound collages, People's Instinctive Travels was clean and focused. Where De La went wide musically, Tribe went deep; where De La was deep and dense lyrically, Tribe went wide and abstract. That both projects managed to do all they were able to do and remain fun is one of the great wonders of hip-hop's first golden age.
Encountered now, in 2015, A People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm feels like a palette cleanser. Considered with Kendrick Lamar's layered and angsty self-examination on To Pimp A Butterfly, the blunting and numbing escapist bounce of Future's DS2, and Drake's bombastic and moody mythological affirmations from If You're Reading This It's Too Late, it's an album that's largely focused outside of itself and its creators. There are three added cuts for this reissue—remixes by Pharrell, J. Cole, and CeeLo—that are passable and melodic but unneeded. Tribe's music needs no updating, even when it sticks out like a sore thumb, because that's exactly what it did in 1990.
"I Left My Wallet In El Segundo", with its eight-bar flip of the Chamber Brothers' "Funky" and Wes Anderson-like narrative, is sparse and simple. But it more than stands up, thanks in no small part to Bob Power's remastering, which makes everything sound fuller and crisper and which uses the empty space between the newly clarified sounds to create groove and warmth. On a fresh listen, the reason "Bonita Applebum" (powered largely by a generous sample of Ramp's "Daylight") is still considered one the best loved songs hip-hop has ever produced becomes clear—musically it's sunny and spry, capturing blushes of virgin courtship. It's objectifying, but respectful; cocksure but awkward; flattering and freaky: Q-Tip praises his desired's "elaborate eyes," promises to "kiss you where some brothers won't" and offers that, "So far, I hope you like rap songs."
The rhymes here are at once conversational and repressed, the topics concurrently large and small. Diet is tackled on "Ham 'N' Eggs" with Tip and Phife rhyming in tandem, "A tisket, a tasket, what's in mama's basket?/ Some veggie links and some fish that stinks/ Why, just the other day, I went to Grandma's house/ Smelled like she conjured up a mouse. " Sexual fidelity and STD's are dealt with on "Pubic Enemy" via "Old King Cole" who "wore the crown but not the jimmy hat" until one day "the fair maiden in the royal bedroom/ Caught the king scratching." Sex and safe sex were at the forefront of Q-Tip's mind—props (women) are referred to often, and the most important thing about retrieving his wallet from El Segundo seems to be reclaiming his "props' numbers" and condoms, or "jimmy hats."
The group is marked for their social consciousness, but not merely because of their awareness, but their ability to wax simultaneously about politics and art. On "Push It Along", Tip traverses police brutality, community unity, and rap dreams in a few bars, managing to be an approachable advocate for responsibility without seeming didactic: "The pigs are wearing blue/ And in a year or two/ We'll be going up the creek in a great big canoe / What we gonna do? Save me and my brothers?/ Hop inside the bed and pull over the covers?/ Never will we do that and we ain't trying to rule rap/ We just want a slab of the ham, don't you know, black?" The lyrics are 25 years old. But were they released today they'd seem right on time, while being out of place—because all these many years later People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm is more than a nostalgia artifact. It's a worthy listen, not because of what it was, but because of what it is”.
Even though some sites say People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm came out on 10th April, 1990, Discogs and other sites say it is 17th April. I will go with the latter. Thirty-five very soon, I wanted to shine a light on one of the all-time great debuts. This album kicked off the career of one of Hip-Hop’s…
MOST innovative and influential acts.