In the 80s Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Jarobi White got together to make the hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest. I’ve been a massive fan of their music for a number of years. I still listen to The Low End Theory with a lot of love.
A Tribe Called Quest emerged in a world of ridiculously serious hard core rappers as the eclectic group that didn’t need to talk about “fuck the police” or “fight the power” as said in the film. They were different and unlike many hip-hop musicians out there drew their inspirations from the music of the past which is another element of their music that set them apart from the rest.
The group lasted only a decade professionally and it was due to their own internal turmoil that was constantly brewing from pretty much day one. The documentary delves into that constant differences that were shown between the characters of the group’s members and how no matter how great friends they were how slightly differing ambitions and life circumstances had certain people constantly pulling away while not wanting to be the bad guy making things harder and harder for them to stay together.
The film asks the question that most people who were big fans of A Tribe Called Quest have either always known or always wanted to know: is Q-Tip really the bad guy? Even though that question is constantly thrown out there I don’t think it’s ever truly answered and I think it’s not because of a lack of honesty but rather the fact that I don’t think anyone involved knows for sure if he is. His main error in handling a lot of the supposed problems with the groups seemed to be with the fact that he had a certain ambition in the world of entertainment that while his colleagues may have had didn’t share his level of desire, or didn’t have the immediate drive that he had.
The film almost makes it seem like the group made Q-Tip into the bad guy since in the early days he had to be the one rallying the troops (like Phife) to get the things done so that they could become truly professional. Now they don’t regret any of it, but at the end of the day when Q-Tip takes that as an excuse to continue pushing the group in one direction or another there ends up being a level of resentment from the others as Q-Tip is looked on as the guy who wants to distinguish himself from the group for individual stardom as opposed to making it about the group, which he refuses to admit to.
It’s those grey areas of friendly trust and ambition that keep the film from being truly interesting. It never answers a lot of these questions definitively and that makes the film suffer in the end. You can discern your own understanding of what actually happened based on what’s being given to us, but that’s what fans have been doing ever since the group broke up in the late 90s. At the end of the day the music is still there to enjoy and will never go away.