Video: A Tribe Called Quest at Rock The Bells
August 4th, 2008
This is classic material right here kids. Tribe’s first New York performance in in 11 years. I gotta tell you man, for a second there I though they were trying to pull a fast one on us with this Tribe set. Because it actually started out with just Q-Tip onstage doing some Tribe album verses and a couple of his solo joints with Mos Def as a hypeman. I felt like maybe they tried to bill it as a Tribe performance when it was actually a just a commercial for Tip’s solo project. I was all ready to go home and air a bunch of people out for exploiting Phife’s name. Don’t get me wrong, Q-Tip is that dude, but I’m not really interested in seeing him perform any of his solo shit except maybe Vivrant Thing. Anyway, my aggravation turned out be premature because Phife and Jarobi ended up making a grand entrance after a short DJ Scratch intermission. Needless to say, I lost my fucking noodle. As you may know, the Five Footer’s health hasn’t been great in recent years, and he’s rarely seen in public these days, so it was really beautiful to see him onstage performing like he was 19 again. Left field: One of the greatest moments in my short but illustrious career as the Greatest Blogger Alive came when I got to meet Phife’s mom at Brooklyn Bodega’s ATCQ panel at Powerhouse Books during last year’s Hip-Hop Honors week. She was really sweet and appreciative of all the love everybody was showing her son, and she complimented me on the Tribe t-shirt I was wearing. That was awesome.
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