Swearing at MotoristsAfter
nearly a decade, former Tribe mainman gets his long-awaited day in
the sun
Back when he was rockin’ the mic for
A Tribe Called Quest, the man formerly known as Jonathan Davis (AKA:
living hip-hop legend Q-Tip) was known for coming correct with a
distinctively nasal message of positivity wrapped in the choicest
rare grooves available, going against the then-prevalent Thug Life
grain of bitches/blunts/bling. His songs moved both asses and minds
simultaneously, pioneering a whole new school of alternative hip-hop
in the process.Swearing at MotoristsA decade after his group’s demise,
Q-Tip is finally issuing his second solo work; one planned for
release between his 1999 debut Amplified and this one, 2002’s
Kamaal the Abstract, mysteriously never made it to store
shelves and has become something of a latter-day underground legend
as a result. Tragically, Q-Tip then proceeded to bounce around the
rosters of five different labels, which effectively silenced him for
most of the decade. The result is a new record that sounds as fresh
and necessary now as his Tribe work did back in the day.
Kamaal is worth noting not only because
it represents a missing link of sorts for Q-Tip fans but also because
it provides something of a road map to what he presents here: a deli
tray of highly personal, somewhat eccentric soul-man moves that draw
from Stevie Wonder’s ‘70s jazzbo exploits and Prince’s more
purple flights of fancy. (Which is to say, if you wonder where Kanye
West got the idea to sing on his latest album, look no further than
Kamaal for inspiration.) The Renaissance is the logical
extension of this exploratory work, coupled with Q-Tip’s need to,
once and for all, step out from behind Tribe’s long, dominant
shadow, and in many respects (if not all), it succeeds wildly in both
dimensions.
The Abstract Poetic builds several of
these tracks on top of a live band—guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkle
shines on the Pat Metheny-like “Johnny Is Dead” while keyboardist
Robert Glasper provides the Prince-like underpinnings of the
superbad/superweird “You.” But Q-Tip doesn’t neglect the
cratediggers in his audience either, building funky tracks such as
“Won’t Trade” out of snippets from Ruby Andrews’ underrated
“You Made a Believer Out of Me” or “ManWomanBoogie” from
Can’s old-school bassline funk (an earlier version of “Shaka”
even included a sample of president-elect Barack Obama’s
instantly-recognizable cadence). There are a couple of small missteps
and interestingly they come when Q-Tip is in collaboration mode
(“Life is Better”’s Norah Jones cameo comes off as Minnie
Riperton-lite, while the D’Angelo joint “Believe” is really no
more inspired for the pairing of the two), but otherwise Q-Tip’s
return to the spotlight is entirely a welcome one.
“The people at the label say they
want something to repeat / but all my people really want something
for the streets,” sings Q-Tip at the beginning of “Dance on
Glass.” Don’t call it a comeback; he’s been here (if perhaps
not heard) for years.