If the rags and gossip shows had been talking trash about the turmoil within A Tribe Called Quest while the conflicts burned hottest, I either didn't see them or didn't care. No, I didn't believe the talk, because Tribe got me into hip-hop, by way of jazz.
And, yet, the story about the implosion that brought the outfit to pieces is much bigger than its four central figures: Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Jarobi. The story told by director Michael Rapaport—the gangly, redheaded actor you’ll remember fill the supporting role in countless films, but whom I remember best for True Romance —reaches into the very core of human interrelations, in which success and failure have identical origins at the point where people they differ. In short, Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest contains a timeless, universal narrative of love and ambition.
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Natural foils to one another, Tribe's primary emcees Q-Tip and Phife Dawg grew up together in Queens. Though Tip grew up on the rough side of the tracks, he gives the outfit sex appeal. "The Abstract" as he sometimes called himself is tall, handsome, ambitious and velvety voiced. Phife, on the other hand, is short—nearly a midget—with big cheeks, bad habits, diabetes and a rough voice. Tip constantly pushes him into the studio.
Phife gives Tribe street cred, while Tip brings the higher consciousness that made Tribe a part of the Native Tongues collective with De La Soul, Jungle Brothers, Mos Def, Common, Black Sheep, Queen Latifah, Leaders of the New School and many others.
The film makes it obvious that while the two need each other, their differences pull them apart. In the blinding light of his determination, Tip appears incapable of acknowledging, let alone empathizing with, Phife's struggles. He's the Paul McCartney of the outfit, hip to a sound one day, against it the other, and going into the studio without the others to continue working. Not that Phife lays it down straight either. He accuses Tip of thinking of the group as "Q-Tip and A Tribe Called Quest" without acknowledging the limitations of his own involvement and his obvious jealousy. Ali Shaeed seems to just endure the arguments, while Jarobi—the spirit of the group, according to Tip—feels so beat up over the clash that he splits.
Rather than focusing too hard on the divergences within Tribe, however, Rapaport lets the essential turmoil leading to the band's breakup reveal itself over the course of the narrative, framed by the 2008 Rock the Bells tour, for which the members reunited to raise some funds for Phife, badly in need of a new kidney. Rapaport meanwhile documents the origins and rise of one of hip-hop's greatest acts, with frequent and sometimes gratuitous accolades by the genre's current crop of stars. I personally could have down without Pharrell's hyperbolic, and essentially empty, statements on the importance of Tribe albums.
The better footage covers Tribe's origins and its music-making process. The moments with Tip in his home—revealing the origins of his beats and samples, as well as his sort of archivist's knowledge of recordings—are worth Busta Rhymes' patronizing words on Tribe's influence (Busta gave me the feeling of a pompous student returning to the teacher to say, 'You were then; I'm now'").
Like any good documentarian, Rapaport understands that the story is bigger than the subject itself. Tribe's story about a time of hip-hop’s duality and transformation, captured with music and old photos reinvented with modern animation. The film is active and alive, allowing me to look at one of my favorite groups of all time differently without losing my affection for their work. Rather, Beats, Rhymes & Life reintroduced me to A Tribe Called Quest. The only let down is that the film ran for a short period at CCA Cinematheque due to a general lack of interest from Santa Fe.
