Just weeks in front of A Tribe Called Quest reuniting to perform 10 dates on the nation's top-grossing hip-hop event, the Rock the Bells tour (which hits the Glen Helen Pavilion on Aug. 9), the rapper-producer allowed a visiting reporter to preview the album while riding shotgun on an SUV crawl around Manhattan.
The verdict: "The Renaissance" marks a return to form that rivals Q-Tip's best work on Tribe's beloved 1993 album, "Midnight Marauders." Featuring multi-platinum-selling singer Norah Jones (on her first hip-hop "collabo"), as well as neo-soul crooners D'Angelo and Raphael Saadiq, "The Renaissance" blends live instrumentation and samples. It encompasses summer jams and club bangers as well as introspective songs such as "We Fight, We Love" (contrasting the experiences of a young girl in a bad relationship with a young man fighting in Iraq) and succeeds -- despite an overwhelming burden of expectation -- as one of the most artistically whole CDs of the late '00s.
Moreover, "The Renaissance" sounds thoroughly modern for the simple fact that so many other artists are just now aping what Q-Tip did 20 years ago.
Discussing the professional odyssey leading to its September release on Universal Motown -- he changed record labels five times in six years, bouncing among every major hip-hop imprint except Island Def Jam, and took an acting role in the 2007 thriller "The Invasion" -- Q-Tip, 38, sounded less like a world-weary casualty of the industry's hustle and flow than a kind of hip-hop J.D. Salinger who has come out of years in the wilderness with his optimism guarded yet intact.
"Since 'Amplified,' I've recorded three albums. I shot a movie with Nicole Kidman that I got cut out of -- it was crap anyways. But I am totally happy with where I'm at artistically," Q-Tip said over an extravagant omakase sushi supper on the Upper West Side. "One thing the music industry has taught me is to manage my expectations. I'm looking forward to moving forward. I've got so many ideas. I see things very clearly."
Cultural legacy
AT A moment when "bringing '88 back" has become something of a rallying cry in hip-hop -- a nod to rap's so-called golden era that lasted from 1988 to '94 -- A Tribe Called Quest's cultural legacy (and in particular Q-Tip's hand in it) has been thrown into stark relief. Tribe's 1990 single "Can I Kick It" enjoys prominent placement in the new coming-of-age comedy "The Wackness." Chicago rap duo Kidz in the Hall reverently name-check Tribe's classic 1991 album, "The Low End Theory," on its song "Drivin' Down the Block (Low End Theory)." And many of today's most forward-looking hip-hop tastemakers -- Kanye West, the Cool Kids, Lupe Fiasco, the Roots, N.E.R.D., Common, the Knux and Andre 3000 of OutKast among them -- owe a debt to the sonic template Q-Tip innovated.
