So this is the story of A Tribe Called Quest, proficient in many arts but none greater than the art of resurrections—a group that faced the past until the present became too enticing for them to ignore. Of how I found myself beautiful enough for jazz music, but only in their image and nowhere else. Of how, in the Midwest, their songs first did not play out of passing cars but then played everywhere. Of how you can be both uncool and desirable all at once. Here, a story begins even before jazz. Like all black stories in America, it begins first with what a people did to amend their loss in
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