A Tribe Called Quest, DJ Maseo@ Festival Hall, Melbourne(12/08/2010)

Sat 14th Aug, 2010 in Gig Reviews

This show has been a long time coming. 20 years to be precise.

As A Tribe Called Quest left the stage after the second encore of their two hour set, it was obvious that the churning, seething mass of people who packed out Festival Hall had witnessed something pretty spectacular.

From the release of their debut album People’s Instinctive Travels and The Paths of Rhythm in 1990 all the way up until their breakup eight years later, A Tribe Called Quest were quite simply the most original and inventive rap group of the decade, perhaps of all time. This tour was to mark the 20th anniversary of the album and amazingly for a group so universally acclaimed, it was their first ever in the Southern Hemisphere. 20 years is a long time to wait but it was well worth it.

Legendary saxophonist/MC/ DJ Maseo, a member of De La Soul, got the night off to a perfect start with a smooth set, showcasing the best of the best of funk and rap over the past 20 years (read lots of DLS, Biggie and The Fugees). It was a nice warmup for the sold out crowd and on any other night, they would have been happy to listen to him all night but in all honesty, there was only one thing on everybody’s mind.

From the first demented horn line of set opener Steve Biko , A Tribe Called Quest were, to borrow a phrase from the inimitable Phife Dawg , well and truly “on-point”.

In the history of rap there have seldom been two MC’s who work better together than Q-Tip and Phife Dawg. Tip is tall, Phife is short. Tip raps high, fast and funny; Phife’s voice is low, grittier. In terms of style and sound they couldn’t be more different, but together they just work.

A perfect example was in fact Steve Biko . They rapped together, Phife taking the lead, Q-Tip emphasising certain snatches of verse, adding his own embellishments, before suddenly beginning to spit out his own rhymes. It was seamless, flawless stuff.

Ali Shaheed Muhammed , the man behind the decks, completed the picture. He gave the two rappers room to breath like on the brilliant Check The Rhime, where the repeated call and reply phrase “you on point Tip?/All the time Phife” was emphasised by Ali with some perfectly timed drops and cut outs, the crowd deliriously screaming their appreciation throughout. As Q-Tip frequently reminded us, it was Ali’s birthday but tonight, we were the ones getting the presents.

Perhaps what best sets ATCQ apart from their contemporaries is their rejection of the more hardcore elements of rap music. There is no macho posturing with these guys, it’s all about having fun. Tracks like Bonita Applebaum, which Tip introduced with a hilarious reworking of the Brady Bunch theme, is about a girl and lust and sex, all staples of rap. Yet where other groups are crass, these guys are witty. There’s nothing small or mean in the rhymes they create.

The centrepiece of the set was their best known track from their first album, the brilliant Can I Kick It. The song is a joyful, exhilarating affair which jumbles together samples from Ian Drury, Russian composer Prokofiev and of course, the bass line from Lou Reed’s Walk on The Wild Side over a smooth snare/kick loop. During the song the crowd was all grins and raised fists, 5000 heads bobbing together at once. As the song unfolded Tip’s repeated refrain “Can I kick it?” seemed to take on a deeper meaning, it summed up the night, the band, the last 20 years, and the answer, delivered by Phife and thousands of screaming voices was a resounding “yes you can.”

CHECK OUT PHOTOS FROM THE NIGHT HERE