Kamaal "Q-Tip" Fareed, Malik "Phife Dawg" Taylor, Jarobi White (later he came out after this effort) and Ali Shaheed Muhammad make up the Queens hip-hip group A Tribe Called Quest, part of the Afrocentric collective Native Tongues (together with De La Soul, Jungle Brothers, Black Sheep, Queen Latifah and others). The group name is found in 1988 by Jungle Brothers, who attended in the same high school as Muhammad and Fareed.
In 1989, A Tribe Called Quest deals with Geffen Records for a demo, then the label leaves the group, the signs with Jive in the same year, releasing the first single "Description of a Fool". In 1990 is published the debut LP of the New York group.
This disc presents one of the best productions of the year, if not the best: the merit of this sound masterpiece goes to Ali Shaheed Muhammad who produced the entire LP creating a rich and complex soundscape, the result of the mix of a large variety of samples of different genres, especially jazz with recurring funky touches, together with boom bap and other accidental and somewhat casual sounds and instruments, including flamenco guitar, pianos, congas but also wind, crickets, and the cry of a child.
The producer also extrapolates melodic scratches that improve sound quality, building incredibly excellent, relaxed and musically fluid rhythms that adapt to Q-Tip's rapping style. His lyricism is quite simple, down-to-earth, the rapper worthily offers his various topics, spitting out themes that range everywhere, from light-hearted bars to more complex socio-conscious thoughts and to Afrocentrism, in an attempt to instill a real message, but concentrate mainly about girls and fun: his lyrics are smarter than the average, positive and overall they succeed in the difficult task of keeping the listener entertained for over an hour, on the other hand they're the real reason why the record isn't perfect.
Q-Tip recites his arguments with a good fresh and calm flow, and a genuine, carefree and swaggering, easy-going style of rapping, which removes both the braggadocio and the sexism with a single change of hand, but fails to excel together with the best of the game despite its consistent, positive and playful mood. The trio has excellent chemistry and brings out a modern and solid hip hop act: Q-Tip does an excellent job as a main artist, he's basically alone in rapping, leaving a couple of verses to Phife and some shots in the interludes to Jarobi, realizing a solo work, one of his greatest and best solo efforts.
Overall, it's an energetic, youthful and fun album, with some silly moments due to its joyful and vital intrinsic nature, it's a powerful and naive, deeply experimental effort: its relaxed sound, its confident, limpid and fluid style, and his particularly elementary lyricism, allowed it to be easily accepted by specialized critics with the reverence of a classic (it's the first to obtain the perfect rating of "5 mic" from the magazine The Source), it's certainly one of the best albums of the year, one of the first efforts to pave the way for a simpler rap and for the jazz rap movement, as well as being one of the milestones of alternative rap, however, unfortunately, it's not excellent and ultimately it's not the immortal classic that critics want to sell you.
Highlights: "Luck of Lucien", "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo", "Bonita Applebum", "Can I Kick It?".
Rating: 9/10.
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