Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (American Music Series)

by Hanif Abdurraqib

When they took the drums of slaves, the slaves simply found new drums in everything, and this is how African rhythms were retained and passed down, held close by those who knew what it was to have a culture ripped from them.

I loved A Tribe Called Quest because I wore hand-me-down jeans to school, my clothes were sometimes too big, and I didn’t make eye contact when I spoke, so I was decidedly weird. They, too, were walking a thin line of weirdness: just weird enough to stand out from their peers, but not so weird that it seemed to be contrived.

Q-Tip and Phife had a complex relationship, made more complex by the fact that they had known each other for their entire lives—since the age of two years old. What is hard to do is imagine a world in which someone you have loved—before you knew what love is—has to balance that love with whatever ambitions they have for a journey you set out on together.

I’ve started to wonder if no one loved Phife’s album because it was a love letter only to you and no one else. I want to know if you listened to it then, and I want to know if you still listen to it now. I want to know if you’re as proud of him as I was. You don’t have to tell him out loud, but I wish I could see the faintest smile spread across your face at the first opening of your brother’s rhymes, Tip.