A Tribe Called Quest: People's Instinctive Travels & the Paths of Rhythm (2LP) [JIVE]

Why you'll love it

This digitally remastered 2LP set spreads the album over four sides for room to breathe. It went gold, and it's widely ranked among the greatest albums of its era and a cornerstone of alternative hip hop.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Remastered

About the album

Hip hop in 1990 was getting harder and louder; A Tribe Called Quest turned up with frogs, Hawaiian strings and a story about a lost wallet. The Queens crew had come up through the Native Tongues collective alongside De La Soul and Jungle Brothers, signed to Jive with Kool DJ Red Alert as manager, and cut the album in about three months at Calliope Studios in New York, a room known for leaving artists to their own devices.

Q-Tip ran the production, chopping jazz, R&B and rock breaks most producers of the day had never touched, while Ali Shaheed Muhammad handled live instruments, scratches and programming. "Can I Kick It?" is a stone-cold classic, "Bonita Applebum" is the sweetest come-on in rap, and "Push It Along," "Luck of Lucien" and "Footprints" set the laid-back, conversational tone the group would perfect on the albums that followed.

XXL called it immensely groundbreaking, and you can hear its fingerprints on decades of hip hop and R&B. Q-Tip built much of it on pause tapes back in the 10th grade, which rather puts our own high school projects in perspective.

Also at Kops: more A Tribe Called Quest on vinyl · browse Hip Hop / R&B

Tracklist

Listen

On Jive, a reissue of the 1990 album.