The Anthology - Tribe Called Quest (A) (CD 1999)

(It was my "responsibility" to get this in last week, but I failed. Hopefully Mad can forgive me.)

Your favorite hip hop reviewer MadTheory has given us a task. It's Hip Hop Appreciation Week and thus, the Hip Hop Appreciation Week Write-off. Our goal? To stress the theme of responsibility in the world of hip hop. What does that exactly mean? Responsibility means many things to different people. If you look at the write-off entries thus far, there are tons of great reviews and each treats responsibility different. Is it the responsibility to keep hip hop from straying from it's roots? Does it mean we diss all shiny suit rappers and frosted MC's? Do we tell Eminem that he's making a killing off of selling his style of hip hop to upper middle America and he needs to stop? Or how about this from Afeni Shakur, courtesy of Davey D's FNV HIP HOP NEWSLETTER # 131. Dee Dee Cocheta (paraphrasing) talks about Afeni who was a keynote speaker at a Hip Hop Appreciation Week Ceremony in Atlanta and says, ""Her response to this years' theme of Responsiblity was to be accountable for your actions and step up to be a part of a movement." As you can see, "responsibility" has many different definitions in the hip hop community.

The way I want to define "responsibility" here with my review of A Tribe Called Quest's greatest hits package entitled The Anthology is quality of music. Today's pop music is all about getting yours before people become sick of you. It's about making as much money possible before your fad becomes yesterday's news. Stars today have to reinvent themselves to capture our fickle public's attention again and again. Today's Nelly could be yesterday's Coolio. You want a reason why album sales are down today? Because we fans yearn for full albums of quality music rather than the one or two singles that are jammed down our throat by pop radio. Honestly, why do I have to buy any albums when I know the single on the radio is the best song and I can hear that song 20 times a day?

Why I like Tribe is because you can take any five of their albums and find songs that people consider classic. Whether or not you liked their last two albums, you still found songs on there that were classic Tribe. If artists today could treat their craft like Tribe treated theirs, longevity in the "short attention span" music industry wouldn't be a problem.

The Anthology starts out exactly where I wanted it to start. Check The Rhime was the first time I heard ATCQ. I was in the 10th grade trying out for the JV basketball team. We had a really good team and at first, I was semi-outcast. I had a couple friends on the team, but didn't really know most of the better players. But soon, because of this song, that wasn't the case. When they knew I could get down with their music, I was in. And everytime I hear this song, I think of that team. A fun ride. The song is just one of the cleanest hip hop tracks I've ever heard. It epitomizes cool, laid back, and jazzy all in the same track. Just perfection in my book.

When I first listened to The Low End Theory I was taken aback by a track called Scenario. I told anyone who would listen that this track was going to blow up. Even before I knew who Busta Rhymes was, that "rawrrr, rawrrr, like a dungeon dragon ..." lyric (is that really a lyric) was so crazy that me and my boys would just try to imitate Busta's voice. This was one of the first songs where I really saw the art of MCing as something more than rhyming. The flow is what keeps the song going. Everyone is on point with it, well except maybe Busta, but he brought so much charisma to that track, it's what will always be remembered as his first memorable appearance.

My dad used to tell me that when he was younger and played Stevie Wonder's Music of My Mind his ears heard so many things that he could go into another world if he just closed his eyes. Do the same thing with the beginning of Electric Relaxation. So many different sounds are going on at the same time. Award Tour was hot as I became a junior in college. It was such a catchy song that radio played it to death in the bay area. My friend and I could be heard singing the hook on a news tape in which we were supposed to be shooting a news story for our journalism class. Who knew the microphone was so sensitive? Luckily we had enough footage without us doing our worst Tribe impressions that we finished the story. You should've seen our teacher's face when we were trying to edit the tape.

Can I Kick It contains that familiar Walk On The Wild Side interpolation. Didn't Marky Mark Wahlberg use it too? How come I don't remember his song very much? Anyway, just a tight use of a sample. Whenever I hear anything that rhymes with bonita, I just throw an applebum at the end. Bonita Applebum, you gotta put me on. Zanita Applebum, you gotta put me on. You get the picture. The song is a slow, laid back gem.

Find A Way was their last "hit" as a group. Because of this song, I thought The Love Movement was going to be on point, but it was a little tired. QTip rhymes, "Messin me up, my whole head, teasin me, just like Tisha did Martin." That rhyme made me laugh out loud when I first heard it and obviously is about the Tisha Campbell and Martin Lawrence fiasco that caused Tisha to hold up production unless she could shoot her scenes away from Martin in the last season of the show Martin.

The only negative thing I can say about this album is the inclusion of QTip's jiggy single, Vivrant Thing. Weird inclusion as I would've rather seen the Scenerio remix, but how can I complain?

Other songs on this disc include, Buggin' Out, If The Papes Come, Jazz (We've Got It), I Left My Wallet In El Segundo, Hot Sex, Oh My God, Stressed Out, Luck of Lucien, Description Of A Fool, Keeping It Moving, and Sucka N***a.

There is some talk that they will get back together, but The Anthology is techincally the last album of their material I believe. I have heard there will be a B-sides album coming out sometime in the near future from them. I will definitely not be mad if they do regroup and come back though.

Here are the other members entered in the write-off.

anthony06511
bigd99999
Boffie
cletta1201
ekidd911
heirograffiti
konspirator01
MattA75
matthos
minortheat78
mrjulius
PacManY2J
roheblius
sadgit
speeddemon531
sun_tzu
youngchinq