Looking for our Lost Tribe: BFR Memphis on Beats Rhymes and Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest

Michael Rappaport’s directorial debut, “Beats Rhymes and Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest”, initially fascinated me with a slice of hip hop history.  I found myself head bobbing and bouncing my hands up and down as if mimicking the motion of a hydraulic low rider.  I giggled quietly in the theatre after hearing Monie Love’s break down of Tribe’s “Bonita Applebaum” and wondering myself if Tip used her fat ass as the muse for “Vivrant Thang.”  I was amused by Black Thought of The Roots who called Tribe the “Miles Davis of Hip Hop” – because of their unpredictable and outlandish style they flaunted, which, perhaps, gave birth, of sorts, to the Black conscious boho style. Such a look has been lampooned – a proverbial attack on Black self-determination – yet, a critique that Tribe frontman, Q-Tip, brushed off.  It’s not how the clothes define the movement, he believes, but the ultimate message of a unified community.  Indeed, I wanted to believe, as one of the members of The Jungle Brothers put it, “They just know about some shit we’re not up on.”

The neon glow of the animation in the opening credits is just as blaring and fascinating as the Black men’s pain throughout the film. Growing up in Jamaica Queens, Phife Dawg (Malik Taylor) and Q-Tip (Kamaal Fareed) were surrounded by hip hop’s stomping grounds. Thankfully, the film didn’t seek out the overwrought story of poverty and how hip hop kept them from gang violence whilst Black girls double-dutched in the background.  We get a sense that both grew up in well adjusted homes where their fathers were present and the streets weren't after them. On the other hand, their inner pain takes a back seat to the initial fame and ultimate turmoil.  Throughout high school, Q-Tip watched as his father’s emphysema progressed before his eyes, and resolved to deal with his pain by knocking out hip hop beats on his school desk. Phife quietly dealt with Type 1 Diabetes (group mates didn’t find out until 1991), and used hip hop to escape from his grandmother’s Seventh Day Adventist observances.  Much isn’t known about the quietly centered DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad. Discovering the magic of disc jockeying was a definitive moment in his youth growing up in Brooklyn; he watched local DJs set up shop in school yards across the street whilst sitting on his gilded fire escape in Brooklyn.  Another member, Jarobi White, is relatively unexplored by Rappaport’s lens, though he is credited by Tip as the spirit of Tribe.  His heartfelt love and connectedness to each member seems to be the most present and unveiled on the screen.

I truly believe God loves hip hop. Destinies aligned for A Tribe Called Quest at Murry Bergtraum High School, despite the looming threat of incarceration of New York City’s police headquarters literally across the street. Linking with classmates The Jungle Brothers (member Mike G helped coin the group’s name), this moment should be a creased page in the annals of hip hop history. One member of The Jungle Brothers was the nephew of the legendary DJ Red Alert who was given their demo. And the rest…Black is Black.  Early on, these young wordsmiths had a way of recapturing the angst and apathy that plagued a faltering community.  On the seminal “Black is Black”, such lines capture their frustration in their treatise:

“Your fantasies will get you killed/ Reality is Black is Black/ I try to tell my people/ We all are one, created equal/ Before we master, we must plan/ Is that so hard to understand?/ Today’s the day we get together/ To try to change and make things better/ If not, where will we be tomorrow?”

To live hip hop is to give homage to music history. Q-Tip is an unquenchable crate digger – finding lost gems in music’s time capsule, the record store. His ability to find seconds-worth of drum patterns and melodies, even one note from Minnie Ripperton, makes him a quintessential hip hop archivist and loop master.  His gift is not ego driven as if he gives life to this lost music. Numerous times in the film, he notes his father’s influence; from putting him on to Lonnie Jones and qualifying hip hop as this generation’s bebop.  It poignantly shows how hip hop is a revival of the talking drum.  Outlawed and scorned slaves of the hip hop beat used jazz and soul samples as a springboard from the turntable.  It made lost connections to jazz, blues, funk, rock, and soul and mediated cultural consciousness across the generations – a transcendent homage that appeared as the Tower of Babel but a veiled pretext that leads to freedom. Hip hop today has lost its soul and enslaved by a beat machine. True fans of real hip hop respect the history and embrace the genre crossing; this equivocates to the power of music without drawing a line in the sand. Hip hop blows in the wind. The mic gleams like the North Star.

What happens once they step away from the mic seems to be the film’s focus.  Tip is painted as an egotistic perfectionist who is annoyed and concerned yet ignorant to Phife’s growing resentment and hysterics toward him during Tribe’s waning.  Phife was the inconsistent, unmotivated, and temperamental five-footer who never understood he was a hip hop god. They were primmed and balanced by Ali Shaeed Muhammad’s quiet demeanor who “talked with his hands” and gave beats life and were restored by Jarobi’s jolly nature.  Eventually Tribe went on to create a powerful community of hip hop thought that was much bigger than one dimensional depictions of Black victimization via violence, drugs, and police brutality.  In the spirit of Afrika Bambaataa’s Zulu Nation, Native Tongues was at the core A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and The Jungle Brothers and later included Queen Latifah, Monie Love, Black Sheep, Leaders of the New School, and Chi Ali.  With a message of “lofty” empowerment, they represented a new dimension of Blackness. It was bold. It made you daydream of freedom. It was the jazz in our head bob.

Pressing past the "golden" era of hip hop, the film takes an interesting turn. Phife’s emotionality palpitates grossly across the screen.  Tip is constantly reproved by the films lens as the habitual line stepper, whether it’s the failed attempts to get Phife to eat and to exercise to control his diabetes; or maybe his creative control of every album until it’s just right; or maybe his desire to keep everyone in “the hut” as they worked on a brewing album. Phife likens Tip’s antics as the complex that separated Diana Rose from the Supremes or differentiated Michael Jackson from Tito…Phife points the finger at Tip. Tip points the finger at the industry. It boils down to respect.

1998 was a pivotal year for hip hop. Sitting with label execs, Phife and Tip saw the end of their quest. Seemingly heartbroken from the lack of respect from the label and the new wave of artists like DMX, Big Pun, and Cam’Ron who would redefine hip hop as a gritty, dangerous landscape, Q-Tip and Ali accepted the looming break-up; Phife was left reeling. The former went on and  made their way into successful solo projects. Phife, who passively claimed he could go “with or without” hip hop, embraced his hoop dreams and becomes a high school basketball recruiter, yet the lost brotherhood seems within reach and is held back by his bitterness. He even spits venom by noting he did not give approval/acceptance of Tip’s solo career.

Ten years later, Tribe comes together for the 2008 Rock the Bells concert, and Phife is still hypersensitive for unfounded reasons and takes offense to Tip’s on stage free verse, “Look alive/ Look at Phife dawg." Phife goes silent and Tip tries to talk it out, but the scene ends in high drama.  After this turbulent moment, Tip is counseled by Maseo of De La and Ali backstage.  Visibly frustrated and hurt, Tip yells out one of the most haunting lines in the film, "It’s about the fucking unit, B. Its all about us." Maybe we all want to believe in being your brother’s keeper. That the tightest bonds are your 100 grand friends.  Any community we create has its ups and downs, but once the beats and rhymes play themselves out, all we have are our natural voices and swirling thoughts.  Perhaps hip hop hasn’t learned how to take those very lyrical lessons and put them into action. The music is therapy to a degree but perhaps its pretense hasn’t been resolved due to an industry controlling its subjectivity. Rappaport thinks the film’s greatest promise is that we will understand the contribution of Tribe to hip hop but it’s much bigger than that.  When the film entered the film festival circuit, much of the beef between Tribe members and his directorial control boiled down to how Tribe wanted to depict their story. And smart move on Rappaport’s part to change the name of the film from Beats, Rhymes, and Fights but that still isn't enough. We've all read about the back and forth, and the infamous email, and some more back and forth.  Rather than basking in their success and influence, it makes one conjecture if this film further detracts from Tribe's bond or delivers us the real...

Telling our stories in such a fickle industry is about as difficult as one of the most telling lines from way back when all A Tribe Called Quest had was each other and “Black is Black” under their belt: See my soul and not my face. One hopes that the film, like the typical drama, will resolve itself in a hug and some dap. The future is unclear for A Tribe Called Quest and true fans will leave the theatre with a renewed love for real hip hop and these legendary and influential figures all over again, yet puzzled on why these brothers can’t work it out.  – Md Gaines-Griggs

/ Five Black Stars