Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest | Review

The accomplishment of Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest is that it will win over audience members who are not fans of the band or even familiar with them. That’s tougher than it sounds given the subject matter. An experienced actor and Hip-Hop connoisseur, the born and raised New Yorker Michael Rapaport steps behind the camera for the first time and expertly crafts this career spanning documentary that is highlighted by revealing interviews and some footage of events in the bands’ life that will cause fans to geek out hardcore on the dynamic and meaningful subject matter that are A Tribe Called Quest.

Hip-Hop is a very polarizing and controversial subject. Despite the fact that in the 1990s it stepped into the limelight of the mainstream, and within a few years came to define pop music, frankly, a lot of people hate it. Further, it’s much more misunderstood than it is hated even. Sociologically, the closest equivalent to Hip-Hop is probably 1970s and 80s Arena Rock turned into Hair Metal. Those sub-genres dominated pop music for arguably a decade, and certainly a good chunk of America hated them. The difference though is that when Motley Crüe were singing about “Smoking in the Boys Room” or Quiet Riot “’Cum On Feel the Noize’ or Warrant sung “Tastes so good make a grown man cry, sweet ‘Cherry Pie,’” you knew what they were talking about and it didn’t go any deeper than that. The most culturally relevant point any of these bands were making is that they wanted to, as Peter Fonda eloquently states in 1966’s The Wild Angels “To be free…to ride my bike without getting hassled by the man…and we wanna get loaded!” Don’t confuse the issue, 80s Hair Metal-ers were not rebelling against the same things Easy Riders were, and whatever fight they had was not as valiant. Hip-Hop is a different specimen though.

It can be argued that the story of Hip-Hop, or to broaden it, the story of Black America, tells the story of America itself. The lyrics of “real Hip-Hop” are taken just as seriously today and analyzed, quoted, worshipped as poets like Robert Frost were in their time. Certainly there are lyricists out there who are just as conscious of their contemporary as the classic poets of their time were. It is doubtful that in 100 years Frost and Notorious B.I.G. will be taught in the same classes or with the same tone, but their impacts must be at least somewhat proportionate to their respective times. In fact, who knows how the high artists of Hip-Hop will go down in history?

For A Tribe Called Quest, this documentary might spell the first hint. Rapaport starts at the beginning, through interviews telling us of how the group (Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammed and Jarobi) grew up in Queens and met in their New York City high school. One member of their classmates rap group The Jungle Brothers was related to Kool DJ Red Alert, at the time the most important Hip-Hop DJ, with a daily show on Hot 97. Tribe got introduced to Red Alert, which was the beginning of their first big break.

From there it focuses on their first album and the beginning of Native Tongues, a rap collective founded by Tribe, Jungle Brothers and De La Soul but later adding many more such as Black Sheep, Black Star (Mos Def and Talib Kweli), Queen Latifah, Common, Beatnuts, J Dilla, Prince Paul and Red Alert. Native Tongues stood for “Afrocentric loving,” positivity and consciousness. They introduced new styles to Hip-Hop with jazz-influenced beats and sampling of a much wider range of artists than their contemporaries. Their lyrics discussed race, spirituality, their African roots and issues of sex and sexuality, with of course the proper dose of partying, girls, etc.

Rapaport documents their entire careers. Repetition brings down most of these kinds of films. In this case, either Tribe had an actual unique story to go along with each of their album releases, with a narrative legitimately progressing and evolving over time, or Rapaport somehow managed to sculpt otherwise uninteresting events into that. Odds are on the former.

The dramatic center of Beat, Rhymes is the relationship of Q-Tip and Phife Dawg over time. Broken down to terms far too simple for such a Shakespearian conflict, Phife thinks Q-Tip is an egomaniacal control freak, and Q-Tip thinks Phife is bi-polar with a poor work ethic, related or unrelated to his bad case of diabetes. Q-Tip is candid with Rapaport, and even opens up some of his emotions, but in the way that a multi-millionaire superstar does it—quite protected. Phife lets it all out, even crying towards the end of the film. The audience cannot help but sympathize and side with Phife just because of how open and vulnerable he allows himself to be for us.

The interviews are only one part of the treatment of this conflict in the film. The equally, if not much more important is found in the live footage. Rapaport shot some of the infamous events in the life of Tribe. In 2008, they reunited and it did not go well. There were onstage disagreements that resulted in nothing more than a poorly reviewed performance, but backstage tempers flared, fists flew when they were together, and then Rapaport has each of them venting later to either Ali or members of De La Soul about the incident.

Phife unloads what we’ve already become accustomed to by that point in the film—more sadness and disappointment than anger. Q-Tip shows his colors though. This footage is the holy grail for Tribe fans, but it’s also heart breaking. What we watch here was reported as big news in all of the Hip-Hop press, but we have never seen this. The entire sequence is about 20 minutes towards the end of the film. The rest of the film moves very smoothly, but here it’s all about the footage. Rapaport needed to include this, even if it causes the narrative to drag for the non-fans. You can liken this section of the film to the part in The Cove when all the dolphins meet their bloody fate. Q-Tip unloads. Clearly emotional and not thinking clearly, he allows himself to be filmed just destroying Phife. This is why the filmmaker came to his Sundance premiere without the support – as the scene does pretty much send Q-Tip into an unrecoverable PR nightmare. Not that it’s going to turn people away from the music, but it cannot help but put a bad taste in the real fans’ mouths.

Much like the original motivation of Native Tongues, Beats, Rhymes almost completely promotes positivity. For every unfortunate moment like Q-Tip’s ranting, there is the (depending on how you look at it) caring text he sent to Phife pre-surgery. What ties this documentary together more than anything is the obvious love for the music on all parts. Rapaport is so clearly passionate about his subject. Rapaport does his homework here – with a who’s who of the Hip-Hop community interviewed, and important content provided from the families.

Beat, Rhymes is going to be loved by the great majority of the group’s fans and as a docu it does stand on its own serving as a great 101 course on Tribe or Hip-Hop with a well-constructed format and a filmmaker who knows where and when to focus on his subjects. Future hip-hop themed documentarists have their work cut out for them.

Reviewed at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. U.S. Documentary Competition Section.

95 Mins. January, 23rd, 2011

Rating 3.5 stars