Rather than buy Shawn Taylor’s uninspiring book about Q-Tip’s first album, I’ll just stick to Matty C’s review from The Source. Back in may 1990 the magazine didn’t use the five mics ratings, but they re-reviewed the album in the following issue, summer 1990, this time with the classic rating.
Press Rewind If I Haven't... 
That response is funny
Sup with that Cube article?
How was my book “uninspiring?” You can’t just drop that wihout further explanation.
Typically I don’t write long posts on this blog, but I can give you a quick explaination.
Uninspiring because for a 17 yo album I think it deserved something better.
Actually I learned more about you than about the album, isn’t that a problem ? What’s the point of writing a book about an album when you haven’t met any member of the group to talk about it, or anybody involved ? An msn conversation with Bob Powers is cool, but look at his answers : “It was just a guy in front of a mic”,”I’m not the right person to answer this question”, “it was just a gig for me”, “Hip-hop was just a type of music like any other to me”, “I have absolutely no idea what their motivation was”, “I can’t think of a specific advice I gave them”.
I’m sure Lucien would have more interesting things to say. Luck Of Lucien seems to be an important song to you, so why didn’t you try to interview him ? Or if you did, why didn’t you write about your search for Lucien ?
I’d like to know what gear Tip was using to produce the beats, did he do it on his own sampler or did he used somebody else gear ? (That’s more interesting than the type of earphone you use in your ipod)
I’d like to ear more about the bidding war between all the majors who wanted to sign them, about the involvement of Chris Lighty, Red Alert, their A&R at Jive etc.
The 10 pages about Low End Theory in Check The Technique are more inspiring than the 116 pages of your book.
Sorry.
You didn’t hurt my feelings. I wrote something for public consumption and I expected critique. But I expect that critique to be well-informed and intelligent, not dashed off fan-boy displeasure. I wrote about Tribe–in a non-traditional way–and I didn’t expect any heat?
What I wanted to do is get away from the “Behind the Music”, star-fuckery that happens when most people write about a beloved group. I hate the very notion of celebrity, and I didn’t want to contribute to sycophantic enshrinement. I believe that once an artist exhibits his or her art, it is no longer theirs. It is, in any true sense, property of the consumer. We interpret and digest it. We spread it like a virus to our friends, to cyberspace, etc. If it wasn’t for us (the receivers/consumers) there would be no commercial art.
I wanted to take the album out of context and show its impact. There has already been enough articles, interviews, etc. about Tribe themselves,I wanted to do something a bit different. Context is everything, and I wanted to show how the music intersected with the times, and how the times and music intersected with my life. Everything you truly need to know about Tribe–and the album–you already know. All you have to do is listen.
Peace
very nice site. i actually remember all of these reviews. thanks for taking the time to post these classic reviews. anent to this posting, might i point you to an interview that myself and a friend did with jarobi of tribe fame. he lives in washington, dc now, and we were fortunate enough to sit down with him, his wife and his three-week old son.
http://blackbacchus.com/2006/01/for-fans-of-tribe-called-quest.html
[…] entered our lives to a much-heralded five mic review in The Source (for Peoples Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm & The Low End Theory) and left us […]
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