Marriages have a 50 percent chance of ending in divorce in the United States, and with money, ego, health, fighting, wandering eyes, and varying ambitions at play, those stats aren't a huge shock. Staying together is hard, yo. And like the many couples we've all known or been a part of, our favorite musical groups are prone to disbanding despite the love … or, the classic albums, the flawless live performances, and the near unanimous critical acclaim.
The Beatles. The Jackson Five. The White Stripes. Rage Against the Machine. Uh ... Destiny's Child. Groups unravel even at the height of success. And in hip hop, one of the most painful breakups for fans has always been the day A Tribe Called Quest called it quits. There's been plenty of speculation about the group’s demise, the most common theory being that Phife Dawg was, well, feeling a little bit like Kelly Rowland to Q-Tip's Beyonce. That's the last Destiny's Child reference I'll be using -- I swear.
Fans finally get somewhat near closure on ATCQ’s separation thanks to the documentary Beats, Rhymes, and Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest. Michael Rapaport (the actor probably best known for his role as a college freshman outcast turned neo-Nazi in John Singleton's Higher Learning) and longtime hip hop fan/New Yawker serves as the film's director. Clearly, the film is a bittersweet love letter to not only a group he still adores but also to the hallowed days of old school hip hop in NYC, in the days when Soulja Boy was still a zygote and had the potential to not grow up to be a truly heinous approximation of a rapper.
Vintage photos of emcees, DJs, breakers, and hip hop founding fathers and mothers literally come to life onscreen as the film takes us to Queens' Linden Blvd., where we trace the formation of elementary school students Johnathan Davis and Malik Taylor into Q-Tip and Phife Dawg of one of the most beloved hip hop groups of all time.
We learn that Q-Tip voraciously scoured vinyl shops and his father's record collection for beats (his reenactment of creating the "Can I Kick It?" track is worth the price of admission alone) and that despite writing his first rhyme around the age of 9, Phife took longer than Q-Tip to warm up to joining a group and didn’t come into his own as an emcee until ATCQ’s second album The Low End Theory. We learn that local legend DJ Red Alert (the uncle of Jungle Brothers’ Mike G) helped them get their start and that The Native Tongues collective (including Tribe, The Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, Black Sheep, Monie Love, Queen Latifah, Brand Nubian, and The Beatnuts among others) fostered a movement for rappers who were, self-admittedly, weird.
Rapaport interviews hip hop’s finest (Questlove and Black Thought, Common, Pharrell, Beastie Boys), culling sound bites of unending praise for Tribe’s discography and oral histories on the group's rise to fame and their influence on other artists.
But of course, you can’t discuss ATCQ’s peak of accomplishments and cultural impact without inevitably discussing the groups’ personal implosion. First, the exit of fourth member Jarobi White (I’ll be the first to admit, as a Tribe fan, that I did not know of Jarobi until watching this film. Yes, I’m ashamed) which was a source of emotional distress for his good friend Phife, who was also dealing with the repercussions of an un-checked diabetic condition. He talks about his addiction to sugar despite knowledge of his disease and the friction it caused between him and Q-Tip who took a self-described “gym teacher approach” (which he later regretted) in encouraging Phife to eat well and exercise with him and deejay Ali Shaheed Muhammed.
Physical fitness aside, the growing fracture in Tip and Phife’s friendship appears to be the main factor in the group’s break-up as Ali kind of sits on the fence as an easygoing pacifist with limited screen time in the film. (He’s looking fine these days, though, so good for him). Phife’s references to Q-Tip as the Diana Ross or Michael of the group (he delivers a Tito Jackson punchline which is, probably, the funniest quote of the entire movie) and Tip’s somewhat feigned ignorance of why Phife is so upset doesn’t do much to clarify the real reason of the split. It’s one great emcee’s word against another’s.
The friction in the group affected their creative output, with many calling their Beats, Rhymes and Life album the “beginning of the end.” [Note: I actually really like that album and think it gets an undue bad rap.] By the time The Love Movement was released, everyone knew the group had had it. However, the story of how the group officially disbanded has Q-Tip telling a markedly different tale than Ali and Phife; the former saying it was unanimous decision and the latter two saying Tip wanted to go solo.
For hip hop groups, break-ups -- or indefinite hiatuses -- seem to occur at higher frequencies than in other genres: Gangstarr, Blackstar, The Pharcyde, Fugees. Lauryn Hill of the latter group once spit an unintentionally prophetic and self-referential verse on "Zealots" from their breakthrough -- and final -- album The Score: "Two emcees can't occupy the same space at the same time/It's against the laws of physics/So weep as your sweet dreams break up like Eurythmics." Hype men and deejays aside, all rappers in a group must command a stage and demonstrate skill or risk befalling the second banana curse (Sorry, Pras…). But if all the emcees hold their own -- and do so exceptionally well -- another issue arises: Is it feasible to equally distribute the shine on each emcee? If each emcee is good enough to go solo, why not just go solo?
Which is exactly what Q-Tip did, releasing three albums between 1999 and 2009, reuniting with Ali and Phife in 2004, 2006, and 2008 for the Rock the Bells tour, primarily because Phife needed money to cover his extensive medical bills.
It is in Rapaport's behind-the-stage footage (often hand-held, shaky and unaware of how the zoom function works) that we see Phife and Tip's contentious friendship truly come to a head. In short, these scenes are documentary gold and perhaps the reason Q-Tip protested the film's premiere at Sundance late last year (ATCQ as a group have a producing credit on the film and the other members fully supported its release). As neutral as Rapaport tries to be, the unfolding of events and interview commentary may paint Phife as the people's champ, particularly as we follow the heart-string-tugging side narrative of his ongoing health problems.
The film ends on one those artfully subtle notes that documentarians would kill for. Rapaport's labor of love salute to A Tribe Called Quest and to a golden era of hip hop could be the template for any examination of group dynamics. If there's any moral of this story, it's a quite simple one: Sometimes relationships get ill.
Beat, Rhymes and Life is in theaters now. If you were lucky to show up on premiere night in Berkeley like I was, you got to see Phife roll through:
No comments:
Post a Comment