Q-Tip's New Quest: Return of a Hip-Hop Architect

The hip-hop veteran resurfaces to ponder the music's legacy

By Jonathan Zwickel
Special to MSN Music

Classic rock: You know it when you hear it.

The term denotes a specific vintage as well as an overarching aesthetic that transcends that vintage. It launches an automatic mental roll call of dreadfully familiar bands and songs and hairstyles. At this point in history, it's part of the lexicon -- almost 37 million hits on Google.

Classic rap: Not so much. Less than a million hits. Hip-hop is only a generation behind classic rock, but the godfathers haven't achieved the King Midas status of the monsters of rock. These days, in fact, the stars of hip-hop's golden age often struggle to gain a fraction of their former audience.

Read "Old School: Why Is There No Classic Hip-Hop?" by Alan Light

Case in point is Q-Tip, formerly of A Tribe Called Quest, one of hip-hop's most beloved and respected groups. Their heyday came in the early 1990s with three forward-thinking, platinum-selling albums before they disbanded in '98. Since "Amplified," Tip's well-received 1999 foray as a solo artist, he's been the victim of industry mishandling. Two follow-up albums slipped through the cracks of two different labels and remain unreleased.

Almost 10 years later, the attention surrounding "The Renaissance" -- released on Nov. 4, after a year in production limbo -- is understandably huge. One of hip-hop's architects finally releases an album on a major label (Universal Motown) in the 21st century, adding up to one of hip-hop's first classic rock moments.

Today, though, Q-Tip has something else on his mind.

"OK, so for everybody reading this, this interview is being done on Halloween," he says, on his cell somewhere in New York.

"I'm in the Walgreens getting all the neighborhood kids candy, because that's what we basically do." The digital bleep of a checkout stand percolates quietly in the background.

"I'm looking at some of these masks, and they have a mask that says 'Wacko Jacko,' and it's a Michael Jackson mask for Halloween." He pauses.

"That and Palin being vice president have to be the scariest prospects for Halloween."

By the time you read this, Q-Tip -- born Jonathan Davis in Harlem, N.Y., 38 years ago -- and the rest of us will know whether Vice President Palin is a scary prospect or a scary reality. We will also know exactly how true "The Renaissance" is to its title.

Recorded with a cadre of young jazz musicians handpicked from New York and Detroit, produced by Tip himself, the album finds Q-Tip returning to his golden age roots, albeit via a brand-new route. The sonics are reminiscent of "Midnight Marauders," Tribe's 1993 masterpiece: hard swing, heavy snares, soulful backing vocals and Tip's acrobatic, unpredictable wordplay akin to a virtuoso jazz soloist. But the album soars on a distinct spaciousness and musicality that's rare within hip-hop, a vibe only realized by a live band working a groove.

"I just believe that live musicianship, it's needed, you know what I mean?" Tip says. "I'd come up with a song or something, and I'd show the song on the piano, we'd play it a few times and then we may jam on it, improvise on it before we finalize it, just to allow some freedom to happen. And then we'd kinda figure out what it is, and there it is."

A Tribe Called Quest was always rooted in jazz -- check master bassist Ron Carter on 1991's "The Low End Theory" -- but "The Renaissance" exploits the live-band feel without sacrificing the crucial boom-bap of sample-based hip-hop. In this case, samples and live instrumentation are used judiciously to derive a proper feel-good soulfulness. The album is both anachronism and update, familiar and surprising.

"The difference between hip-hop and jazz is that hip-hop is really youth-driven," Tip says. "And when I say 'youth,' it's not necessarily age, it's about the intellectualism of the listener and the one doing the music. It's a prerequisite to be open-minded, to be creative and daring and stuff like that."

Hip-hop, he says, has no time for the purism that's mired jazz in the past: "It's much more of a consumptive art."

"The Renaissance" -- subtly hypnotic, instrumentally adroit, lyrically dense -- defies easy consumption, however. It bumps easily, amiably, but thanks to Tip's broader musical scope, it also takes time to digest. These songs are defiant ("Johnny Is Dead," "Won't Trade"), but they're also buoyant (first single "Gettin' Up," "We Fight/We Love"). There's love all over the album, backed a little bit of anger. In all these ways, the new album is very much classic rap.

As one of the music's most creative elder statesmen, Q-Tip is constantly asked about "the state of hip-hop." It's as if fans need validation that the music isn't a fad, that the artists still live and breathe the music they love. In that way it's not like rock 'n' roll, not yet; nobody needs to ask Mick Jagger about the state of rock. So why constantly question the status of hip-hop?

"I think because people want to see its demise," Tip says. "Because it seems so subversive and it seems the people who created it were definitely subversive and almost, like, inhuman. All of the things that we went through to create it were inhuman, so it seems like it was just a black sheep of artistic voice. That's why I think everybody's always asking what I think of the state of it. As if to say, it's wack, right? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I know, it is wack. Or, yeah I know, we have these problems."

He pauses once again, turns and says a quick "hi" to someone in line or passing through the aisle. And then, possibly considering "The Renaissance" the answer to that tired old question, back to the phone:

"But, you know, silver lining. Always."

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Jonathan Zwickel writes about music for the Seattle Times and is working on a biography of the Beastie Boys.