"Never ever ever can we fake moves"

My favorite Tribe Called Quest Album: Midnight Marauders

For me, coming of age around the same time that the Native Tongues rose to fame, was like someone coming to me and being like, here's a handful of artists that are as weird and out there as you but they're funky and cool and intellectual, humorous, creative and proud of their culture, the way you were raised to be. 

How the heck does something like that even happen? But it it did! My bff, Vanessa introduced me to the Jungle Brothers "Done by the Forces of Nature" album in the early 90s, probably the summer of '89 and it changed my life! Meeting someone like her, someone who was so open to different modes of expression, someone who wrote poetry and journaled like me and who just liked to hang out and feel the breeze was already huge, but music like this came forth as such a binding extension of our relationship. She was one of the only people I knew who was listening to Teddy Riley and Led Zepplin you know? We just loved a lot of the same things about how music made us feel. When I first heard "Potholes in My Lawn" by De La Soul I was like what-the-hell? But I could appreciate that is was something I had never heard the like of before and I could also appreciate that they were reaching back in their parents album bins to sample music I had been raised with for years like Hall and Oates and Steely Dan. A Tribe Called Quest did the same and I mean as much I loved them, watching this documentary only made me love them more for taking that post Civil Rights era music and realizing it in a new way, and essentially paying homage to it through sampling and transforming it to create that amazing time when for a minute, it felt cool to be who I was at that time, to start my locks with pride, wrap  them in Mud Cloth, rock cowrie shell jewelry, wear a blazer and a neck tie to school just to be contrary, write poetry and share my journal entries with a tight circle of diverse friends. I loved that time of my life.

They other thing I will say about what I saw in Michael Rapports doc is that it seemed pretty easy for these guys, in spite of their intense struggles and disagreements to express love for one another. TBQ was not about the traditional sort of super macho aspects of rap that has become very typified in the definition of it's present culture. They were almost like black male nerds. LOL!! But they could still kill it on the mic! They had such a range of abilities and they didn't seem to limit themselves to one way of expressing manhood. It was just really beautiful to see how Jarobi and Phife talked about their relationship. They have a bond that's just beyond and that I hadn't even been aware of. Ali Shaheed Muhammad seemed to be the quiet, serious one who was caught in the middle of Tip and Phife's bickering since Jarobi quit the group pretty early on. 

I don't want to give too much away but the doc covers not only how the Tribe came together and rose to fame but also about really personal things that are going on in their every day lives. I give a lot of credit to Rappaport for staying out of the film himself, allowing his own clear sentiment to show itself through the way he documents, the way he edits. It was well done, a light handed but focused touch. You know where he comes from. He's not an outsider. There's trust and honesty. 

That being said, I don't know if I feel there needs to be a TBQ reunion album. Maybe they had their time and that time seems to be definitely done. It served it's purpose for me, and those like me who witnessed the Native Tongues emerge at that time. But it was great to be transported to that feeling again and to learn things about it's creation that I hadn't known before. It made me love it that much more and maybe wish that that time could have lasted a little longer. The fact is though, and this fact is clearly made in the film, that if the Tribe wanted to get back together again, to do anything, even just appear together, people are ready to be there to watch and listen. That's how dope they were. That's how much love they put out.