 | JKooks (3)
11/29/2003 |  I'm with LadyShark4534 on this one. If A Tribe Called Quest aren't legends, then no one on this list is. Who would have thought that a couple of kids from Queens who had an equal interest in jazz and rhyming would become one of the most influential acts in the history of hip-hop? Their earlier stuff was the best, my favorites being The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders. To show Tribe's appreciation for jazz, they punted the traditional, computer-generated basslines, and instead asked legendary jazz bassist Ron Carter to record with them for The Low End Theory. However, Midnight Marauders is by far my favorite Tribe endeavor. Marauders had all my favorite Tribe songs, like Stir It Up (Steve Biko), Award Tour, Midnight, We Can Get Down, Electric Relaxation, and God Lives Through. Discovering A Tribe Called Quest was so refreshing to a kid like me, who at the time was growing very tired of the cash-flashin', ghetto-blastin' gangsta archetype. And another nice thing about A Tribe Called Quest was how they for the most part steered pretty clear of the misogynistic, tougher-than-thou ghetto aesthetic, with the obvious exception of later, weaker albums like The Love Movement (which is usually a clear sign that it's time to pack up your things and call it a career - which they did), in which they tried to shed their nice guys image and pretend to be hard, which obviously didn't work. But on a whole, the tasteful beats of Ali, and the positive, upbeat rhymes of Q-Tip and Phife Dawg created a piece of musical history that was far greater than the sum of its parts.
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