Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest

In his non-fiction book Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest (2019), American poet and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib offers a critical analysis and history of the American hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest. Abdurraqib also includes elements of autobiography and social critique, billing the book as a "love letter to a group, a sound, and an era." The book’s title comes from a song on A Tribe Called Quest's 1990 debut album, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm.

Before launching into the story of A Tribe Called Quest, Abdurraqib relates a brief history of African and African-American music: "In the beginning, somewhere south of anywhere I come from, lips pressed the edge of a horn…In the beginning before the beginning, there were drums, and hymns, and a people carried here." In his phrasing of the migration of African music, Abdurraqib reminds readers that the vibrant evolution of blues, jazz, and hip-hop in America is ultimately rooted in one of history's greatest atrocities: slavery.

Fast-forward to 1985 when two high school friends in Queens, Kamaal Ibn John Fareed and Malik Izaak Taylor—performing under the monikers Q-Tip and Phife Dawg, respectively—joined forces with producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad and rapper Jarobi White to perform and record music as Crush Connection. At the suggestion of the Jungle Brothers, a rap trio who attended the same high school, the group changed its name to A Tribe Called Quest. After Q-Tip raised the group's profile by performing on the Jungle Brothers' hit album, Straight Out the Jungle, A Tribe Called Quest rejected a series of lucrative offers from various major and mid-sized labels to record an album for Jive Records, then an independent hip-hop label known for launching the careers of such icons as Boogie Down Productions and Too Short.



In 1990, Jive Records released A Tribe Called Quest's debut album, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. Along with contemporaries like De La Soul, the album eschewed the more traditional or well-known rock and R&B samples used by most hip-hop artists in favor of jazz, found sound, or more obscure R&B samples. For Abdurraqib, who grew up in a jazz-loving household that all but banned hip-hop, the album's combination of jazz and hip-hop helped bridge "a gap between my father and me," adding that the group "made rap music for our parents and theirs but left the door open wide enough for anyone to sneak through."

Lyrically, many observers felt that the album marked a departure from some of the dominant threads in American hip-hop at the time. Less fiercely political than Public Enemy and less visceral and violent than N.W.A., the album featured lines devoted to laid-back topics like safe sex and vegetarianism. Dismissing the false binary that N.W.A. were "angry black men" while A Tribe Called Quest were "hip-hop hippies," Abdurraqib writes that N.W.A. were "absolutely rooted in some idea of what would make young white people most excited and old white people most afraid," while A Tribe Called Quest were "absolutely rooted in some idea of what would make young black people most curious and old black people most welcoming."

A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and the Jungle Brothers quickly came to be defined with a loose collective of artists known as Native Tongues. Afro-centric and influenced heavily by jazz and more obscure strains of world music, Native Tongues "were like my crew, or potentially your crew," Abdurraqib writes. "They were uncool enough to define a new type of cool on their own terms…The Native Tongues briefly built a world in which they knew themselves as each other's people."



In 1991, A Tribe Called Quest released what many believe to be their finest achievement, The Low End Theory. While a number of critics and executives doubted its commercial appeal, the album ended up selling more than twice as many copies as its predecessor, achieving platinum status. The success of hit singles like "Scenario" and "Check the Rhime" led to even greater exposure, including an appearance on the Arsenio Hall Show. As time went on, the album's appeal only increased to both critics and the public. Rolling Stone named it the 36th best album of the 1990s and the 153rd best album of all time.

From 1993 until 1998, A Tribe Called Quest released three more critically acclaimed albums, including 1993's landmark, Midnight Marauders, its fast-selling album. Though slightly less loved than its predecessor by mainstream critics, a number of hip-hop-focused critics consider Midnight Marauders to be the group's best outing. By 1998, however, tensions had grown between Q-Tip and Phife Dawg, and the group decided to split.

After a series of one-off performances between 2013 and 2015, the group decided to record a new album in secret. By that time, Phife Dawg was struggling mightily with the diabetes that had long afflicted him. With the album nearly complete, Phife Dawg died on March 22, 2016, and Q-Tip finished the album with the help of a series of high-profile contributors, including Andre 3000, Kanye West, Elton John, and Kendrick Lamar. The eventual album, We Got it from Here...Thank You 4 Your Service was released to widespread critical acclaim, ending up on countless Top 10 of the Year lists.



Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest is an intensely personal and rewarding biography of a landmark hip-hop group.