{"id":17434,"date":"2019-03-20T09:00:36","date_gmt":"2019-03-20T16:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=17434"},"modified":"2019-03-18T10:52:56","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T17:52:56","slug":"new-book-looks-at-a-tribe-called-quests-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2019\/03\/20\/new-book-looks-at-a-tribe-called-quests-legacy\/","title":{"rendered":"New book looks at A Tribe Called Quest’s Legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Hanif Abdurraqib makes a heartfelt homage to the band A Tribe Called Quest in his new book Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest<\/em>. The band left an indelible mark not only on the author and on all of rap but on the music industry, and this book explains why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When early hip hop songs sampled tracks from \u201960s and \u201970s LPs, the music, Abdurraqib says in the book, \u201ccreated a dialogue between past and present.\u201d Abdurraqib places hip hop within the context of a long history of Black music in America, demonstrating how it\u2019s an extension and continuation of the constant struggle of Black musicians to hold on to their musical traditions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Tribe Called Quest began as a crew hanging out in Queens, New York. They were part of Native Tongues, a collective of east coast hip hop bands and artists. This book looks at the history of the east coast rap scene and the emergence of the west coast scene in LA, and how the conflicts between the two scenes ended in the deaths of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rap became dangerous on the west coast in the early \u201990s with the humiliating arrest of the members of NWA and their ultimate vengeance with a song called \u201cFuck the Police.\u201d In the book, Abdurraqib contrasts the sentiments of the scenes on the two coasts, saying that on the west coast \u201c\u2026what would make young white people most excited and old white people most afraid… [on the east coast] would make young black people most curious and old black people most welcoming.\u201d He says that A Tribe Called Quest does not \u201capproach race politics with violent rage, not because they don\u2019t feel it, but because their solutions are more esoteric.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chapters 4 and 8 are loving tributes, fan mail to each of the band members. In a letter to band member Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Abdurraqib recreates the scene at a lunch-hour sock hop in high school and credits the mood to Muhammad, whose music was playing the first time the author kissed a girl he liked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abdurraqib\u2019s themes and approach as a music historian are similar to Chris Walter\u2019s histories of Canadian punk bands SNFU, Personality Crisis, the Real McKenzies, and Victoria\u2019s own Dayglo Abortions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although they disbanded after their 1996 album Love Movement<\/em>, Tribe reunited for concerts in 2004 and 2006, and for festivals in 2008 and 2011, by which time the band had become legendary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the book\u2019s last chapter, Abdurraqib discusses how at the 2017 Grammy Awards, rap was finally acknowledged as a respectable category of music. But fans of A Tribe Called Quest knew that all along, and this passionately written book will remind readers of both the genre\u2019s and the band\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hanif Abdurraqib makes a heartfelt homage to the band A Tribe Called Quest in his new book Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest. The band left an indelible mark not only on the author and on all of rap but on the music industry, and this book explains why. When […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,229],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-march-20-2019"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17434"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17436,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17434\/revisions\/17436"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}