A Tribe Called Quest: The Anthology (2LP) [JIVE]

Why you'll love it

This 2LP set gathers the Queens group's best-known tracks from all five albums they'd made by 1999, plus two soundtrack cuts and Q-Tip's solo single "Vivrant Thing." It's the quickest way into one of hip hop's most loved catalogues.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Includes Q-Tip's solo single "Vivrant Thing"

About the album

Most groups would settle for one perfect album. Q-Tip, Phife Dawg and Ali Shaheed Muhammad put together a run of them, and this 1999 collection pulls the highlights from People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, The Low End Theory, Midnight Marauders, Beats, Rhymes and Life and The Love Movement.

"Check the Rhime" and "Jazz (We've Got)" show off the warm, jazzy low end that made The Low End Theory a touchstone, "Award Tour" and "Oh My God" bounce off Midnight Marauders, and "Scenario" brings in Leaders of the New School for a famously rowdy posse cut. Later work from The Ummah, the production team built around Q-Tip and J Dilla, turns up on "Stressed Out" and "Find a Way," and "If the Papes Come" comes over from the Mi Vida Loca soundtrack. "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo" and "Bonita Applebum" go right back to the 1990 debut.

It's a mix of hits and deep cuts that plays like a greatest-hits set should, front to back without a skip. Four sides, and the wallet, as far as anyone knows, is still in El Segundo.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Jive, the 1999 compilation.