Q-Tip - The Renaissance
When A Tribe Called Quest broke up people thought it was all over for Q-Tip and the crew but little did people know when Q-Tip dropped 1999’s “Amplified” that something special was going to happen. But over the course of the new millennium The Abstract has suffer allot of label set backs with his sophomore album “Kammal The Abstract” not seeing the light of day except with an ultra rare full length promo that has circulated the internet for years. And with the announcement of “The Renaissance” allot of fans of A Tribe Called Quest rejoiced and couldn’t wait.
From the jump Q-Tip flips the light bulb on wit “Johnny is Dead”, “Won’t Trade” and “Getting’ Up” all set the vibe of the album up wit strong dope rhythms, beats and rhymes. For the most part I think Q-Tip flow is similar to Rakim “Ageless” and is proving time and time again that no matter what you’ve done in the past you can keep it moving “1nce Again” (similar to what A Tribe Called Quest did on Beats, Rhymes and Life album). I think Q-Tip found his niche and rolls through with it. Allot of the production tends to feel and come off very clean and well edited which Q-Tip doesn’t really deviate from that course. For the most part the whole album is done by Q-Tip and here’s where it’s interesting the lone other produced track is J. Dilla joint “Move” which uses The Jackson 5 “Dancing Machine” sample to the tee. The track is prolly the highlight of the album because it has such a tight loop and very hard but light enough drums to give the song a strong danceable kick that the clubs would love. And Q-Tip comes so flawless over a Jay Dee beat.
One of the more beautiful things is Q-Tip could have came off as a disgruntled emcee and say all the negative things about the current state of hip hop but he didn’t and I applaud him for that. Instead he gave praise on one of the smoothest tracks I’ve heard some spit over in a while on “Life is Better”. Thus this track gave love to cats like Ludacris and Nas but also gave love back to forgotten pioneers such as Schoolly D and Dana Dane.
Overall Q-Tip goes in hard giving the album strong styling that few cats in the game can match better than he. I feel like this album brings him back to the light where giving him a rebirth. Regardless of how allot of people feel I think Q-Tip on the board does allot of what allot of older rap heads couldn’t dream of is instead of recreating his sound Q-Tip simple answer was updating it without any compromise. For most the album there isn’t a forgiving misstep to behold until maybe “Manwomenboogie” but other than that it’s so soulful, jazzy, electronic, hard, boom bap every hip hop adjective one could muster is what this album is sonically. I feel in some regards this album is more of a cross between “The Love Movement” rather than “The Low Dow Theory” but has the feel of Tribe’s debut album. I’m giving this album a 4.5 stars out of 5 because what Q-Tip does is such a strong effort that it’s amazing while most albums are so over saturated with guests and multiple producers theirs no cohesion what so ever and with slim amount of guests mostly all singers it’s dope to see someone think out side the box wit some dope messages rather than be just another cat trying to keep up wit the jones.
4.5 out of 5 stars
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