Ask any hip-hop head and they'll tell you: Lyrically, "the Abstract" (as Tip calls himself) helped redefine the genre. The most forward face of the Native Tongues' hip-hop collective -- a massive that also included De La Soul, the Black Sheep and the Jungle Brothers -- he shifted emphasis away from gangsta nihilism toward the light of Afro-centrism, self-love and a unified hip-hop culture. As a producer, Q-Tip (his given name is Jonathan Davis, but he changed it to Kamaal Fareed after converting to Islam in the mid-'90s) helped broaden hip-hop's sonic horizons by incorporating jazz samples with swing beats like no producer before him.
"Tip is a master," said producer Pharrell Williams, one of hip-hop's most successful and prolific hitmakers. "His way of looking at sampling was unique to everybody else's. He would take the sweetest spot of a record, usually a bridge while everyone else was taking the break [beat], and make a song around it. I don't call him Q-Tip. I call him 'teacher.' He's one of the guys that raised me as a musician."
The genre-splicing indie/hip-hop/new wave/rock singer-songwriter Santogold went a step further, calling Q-Tip a "musical legend." "He is intrinsically connected to music and uses it as a way to explore himself," Santogold said. "Music is his life force. He's a true artist in that way."
Yet it wasn't that long ago that his career seemed to be stuck in quicksand. After a 10-year run together, A Tribe Called Quest's members (MC Phife Dawg, DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Q-Tip and the group's rotating member and "hype man" Jarobi) went their separate ways in 1998 -- leaving a void in hip-hop for which a contingency of the group's fans have mostly blamed the Abstract.
"For people who love Tribe, I'm the defector," Q-Tip said between gulps of premium sake. "They say, 'You should get back with Ali to do the beats.' But a lot of people don't realize I did all the music in Tribe. In the first three albums, I did all the beats!"
Nonetheless he tasted early solo success, signing with Clive Davis' Arista Records to release the party-minded "Amplified" (best remembered for its effervescent lead single "Vivrant Thing"). But when Davis was ousted as label chief in 2000, around the time Q-Tip was working on his second album, "Kamaal the Abstract," the rapper-producer made the first of a series of wrong career turns.
