Last night in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles, an impromptu listening party filled DJ boutique Turntable Lab in anticipation of Q-Tip. Heads, hipsters and ardent ATCQ fans formed intermingled pockets throughout the shop, waiting to see what he’d show up with. When he walked through the door, Tip carried his forthcoming album The Renaissance and the air of a DJ — a forever fan of music not stuck on himself.

“I don’t walk around with a million bodyguards,” Tip told the crowd when he stepped behind the DJ booth. “I’ve never been about trying to sell a million records… When we made records like “Bonita Applebum,” radio stations would say ‘I like this, but it doesn’t fit with this Guy record and this Public Enemy record.’ Now it’s ‘I like “Gettin Up” but how am I going to play it with this T-Pain?’” Read the rest of this entry »

Me and the homie LC are like the fraternal twins within the Crew. For the most part, we’re on the same page when it comes to executive decisions, our primal focuses of interest in life and just always looking to stay invigorating when it comes to our writing. Now, when comes to lending our ears to the music, that’s when our reciprocal rapport’s fork-in-the road, so to speak. She tends to go in sucking all the positivity out a track, like some fanatical vampire critic, while I on the other hand, seem to cling to the downsides of things as a way of allowing the good in the music to honestly earn some credibility.

Which brings us to the album that sealed A Tribe Called Quest’s indefinite hiatus: The Love Movement. She seems to think it’s a diamond that shone bright amongst all the other jewels we received in 1998. I purposely broke my CD case to get some smudges on that French vanilla album booklet. We’ll let you decide who’s right and who’s wrong as we give you 50 ways to love or hate The Love Movement…

Words By LC Weber

…le sigh…

I love this album. Read the rest of this entry »