Inspired by the release of Beats, Rhymes, and Life, Ryan O’Hanlon finally listened to The Low End Theory.
Up until a few days ago, I’d never listened to The Low End Theory all the way through. Gasps! I know. Without context, it’s the least surprising thing you’ve read today, and it’s not like I wear my taste in music on my sleeve (tongue?). Sure, I’m a white dude who played soccer and writes about sports and men’s stuff, but I’m also a guy who had an A Tribe Called Quest poster on his wall at college. I’ll give you 20 minutes to go find a Tribe poster. Go ahead, I’ll wait …
OK, it didn’t happen. It takes effort to find that poster. I could’ve just as easily hung something else or paid for that ’94 World Cup Michael Jordan poster I won on eBay and then never completed the PayPal steps for. ([Redacted], if you’re reading this, I’m sorry. I will never make it up to you.) But no, I had to have that poster for some reason. Yet, I hadn’t even listened to the Mona Lisa of early-90’s-jazz-infused-socially-conscious-and-purposefully-intelligent rap from beginning to end. With Michael Rappaport’s Tribe documentary, Beats, Rhymes, and Life, opening across the country today, I needed to figure out why.
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The year before I went off to college, my friend burned me—yes, burning was still a thing six years ago—three discs worth of Tribe music. It was awesome. The beats, hooks, and progressions were all tight, and the jazziness struck me somewhere and grew with each listen. I loved this, this less aggressive, thoughtful—even though I didn’t pour over the words, the delivery told me they had to be smart—cool music. I don’t know what cool means and I never will. But this seemed it. This wasn’t who I was. And these guys weren’t rhyming about any problems an 18-year-old me had to worry about, but that was part of the attraction. They weren’t outwardly “anything.” Everything about the music, except for a few Busta Rhymes guest spots (seriously, what the hell is this?), was understated. The Tribe’s music was so many things, but none of them were obvious. That’s compelling. That might be cool.
(Note: I don’t know the correct shortened name for the band. Sorry if I offend everyone.)
I was reaching back in time and taking the bits and pieces that I wanted, leaving behind whatever else I was too lazy to look into.
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It was like reading a writer you really admire. Their styles take on a confidence and authority for you. Even the bat-shittiest of crazy theories becomes fact as it goes from them to you. And that was the Tribe, for me. They were the guys who always knew what they were doing. They were confident without being outwardly intimidating. They never seemed mad, and that gave them this imaginary scariness. Like if that quiet kid in fifth grade was also the coolest kid in your school. And somehow they packaged all that into quick, four-minute tracks that always had me doing the thing where you jut your chin in and out when no one was looking.
They’d been gone for a long time, though, when I met them, and that posed a problem in the traditional devotee-musician relationship. When you listen to a current musician, one you care about, you follow the news, you buy the music on iTunes, the EPs, the LPs, you download the remixes and the mix tapes, and you probably try to see them live. Like a sports team or any other cause, you try to pay it back somehow. And you’re not even purposefully paying it back; it’s just a by-product of you pursuing the full experience. Or, if you’re a horrible person, you just pirate the music and siphon what you can from the band without giving anything in return.
And yeah, that does make you a terrible human being. But that’s basically what I did. I was handed a near-exhaustive library of Tribe music for free. I downloaded it, and I listened, and I enjoyed. But the group wasn’t around any more. There was nothing new to interest me, no tour in which to take up their cause, and no next album to buy. I was reaching back in time and taking the bits and pieces that I wanted, leaving behind whatever else I was too lazy to look into.
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When you talk to anyone, especially any white person, about A Tribe Called Quest, they immediately tell you that The Low End Theory changed their life. It’s the best album, like … ever. Shit, if I drive by a Best Buy right now, I might swing in and grab a copy. This is the basic-est of Tribe knowledge.
If you consider yourself a fan, the least you do is play The Low End Theory all the way through, once. But I never did. I listened to the eight songs from the album I had in my iTunes and the 50-or-so more tracks from other albums. I wasn’t against listening to the whole album, but I didn’t want to, either. I had my music, I played my music, and that was it. I knew nothing about these guys other than what their music told me. What I had was great, and I thought I had enough. I went on and listened to De La Soul, Jurassic 5, Gangstarr, and then moved on to Common, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and Lupe Fiasco. I listened to all that stuff-white-people-like rap for the same reasons I fell for the Tribe; they were the ones who opened me up to everyone else. I bought music from my favorites and I even went to a Lupe concert (full disclosure: in a gym at my school), lucky enough to see him before Obama became a terrorist.
Through this, I lost my connection to the Tribe. I got swept up in the newer stuff, the production, and the references I could actually understand. I stopped listening to them, outside of a random shuffle-play on iTunes. I eventually moved away from rap, altogether. And maybe that never would’ve happened if I listened to The Low End Theory and let it change my life. It couldn’t, though. It was out of my time, and I clearly wasn’t willing to let it happen. Nothing, even the urging of every Tribe fan, was enough.
But then the worst celebrity basketball player ever had to go and document it all. The Tribe was back in the news. People wrote well (and really weirdly) about the group’s history and the documentary, which, from all indications, is superb—minus its Consequence-less-ness. (The band never needed him, but the documentary could’ve used so much more, they say.) They were back in my mind. Q-Tip and Phife were having falling-outs on the page in front of me. They were alive, and maybe that’s what I needed, six years after I purposefully listened to my first Tribe track. (The first Tribe-related song I ever heard was “Vivrant Thing.” We’ll pretend that never happened.)
So, I listened all the way through. Forty minutes later, my life was the same, but the music still holds up. It’s still got all the things I loved it for six years ago. It was like stepping back in time to a time when I was stepping back in time. If I was using a time machine, some kind of continuum would’ve been destroyed. That’s what the Tribe were for me, though: a well of awesomeness, there whenever I needed it. Knowing that they’re still there, even though the group no longer is, won’t make my life any worse.
—Photo via SomeoneWhoGivesADamn.org
I’ve been thinking about seeing that documentary and I think this may have reved me up a bit more. The Low End Theory is a great album. I actually limit how much I listen to it so I don’t spoil it (and “Scenario” was actually one of the first songs I learned all the lyrics to, and to this day I still know most of them). Speaking of Busta Rhymes, go back and listen to Leaders of the New School. Another rap group from around that time and where Busta came from, and they also suffered from internal conflicts that… Read more »
The Low End Theory became one of my favorite albums after hearing it for the first time. It definitely held up well and I’m glad to see GMP showing some love for it. Now i have to see the documentary.