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Born David Madson in Cincinnati, OH, in 1976, producer Odd Nosdam first began experimenting with looping as a teenager, which eventually led to the purchase of a Dr. Sample and eight-track player while he was a student at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Soon, he was working with future labelmates Doseone and Why? (with whom he formed cLOUDDEAD), and in 2001 his debut, Plan 9: Meat Your Hypnotist, came out on Mush Records. Odd Nosdam then moved to California to become part of the Anticon team, producing albums for many of its members and releasing his own No More Wig for Ohio in 2003 and Burner two years later. ~ Marisa Brown, All Music Guide
MP3.com Live: Tribe's odd couple
In a reunion show at the Berkeley Community Theater, A Tribe Called Quest shows off its vast catalog of hip-hop classics.
BERKELEY, Calif.--Long before Outkast's Andre 3000 and Big Boi established themselves as hip-hop's Odd Couple, there was A Tribe Called Quest's Q-Tip and Phife Dawg.
A Tribe Called Quest
Andre and Q-Tip are the eccentric, artsy vocalists that find the bounds of hip-hop constraining, while Big Boi and Phife are blue-collar emcees, always with a rhyme at the ready. Early in their careers, each duo seemed perfectly in tune, but the creative differences took hold as the years wore on.
But while Dre and Big Boi have so far managed to stretch the rubber band of their partnership to its creative threshold, that of Q-Tip and Phife broke a long time ago, leading to the group's demise in 1998. Both have pursued less-than-stellar solo careers ever since, and though they'd played select shows together in the past eight years and released some hits packages, the NBA 2K7 Bounce Tour, which kicked off last week, is the group's first tour together in six years.
The emcee duo--joined by the group's third member, DJ/producer extraordinaire Ali Shaheed Muhammed as well as prodigal Tribe member Jarobi--reunited on stage last night at the Berkeley Community Theatre. The one-hour set thrilled the packed house and left even devoted fans aghast at just how many great songs the group churned out over its five-album, 10-year career.
A Tribe Called Quest at the Berkeley Community Theatre.
After a lengthy delay in which Slum Village's "Raise it Up" was played repeatedly, the quartet emerged on stage to the killer Ron Carter bass line that opens "Buggin' Out," one of the standout tracks from 1991's The Low End Theory. Just like the Outkast duo, the pair's outfits represented their divergent personas, with Tip sporting a sweatshirt over a dress shirt with a bow tie and Phife wearing an oversized Oakland Raiders jersey.
The group whizzed through seven straight songs in 20 minutes without even a pause, rattling off classics like "Oh My God," "Phony Rappers," "Butter," and "The Chase Pt. II." It was enough to make everyone in the room a bit breathless.
The group's calling card has always been their jazz-inflected sound, metaphor-laden lyrics, and benign boasts. But more than anything, it was the playful lyrical interaction between Q-Tip and Phife, most clearly on songs like "Check the Rhyme" as they traded lines like, "You on point Tip?/All the time Phife."
That interplay was vibrant on stage last night, with the pair and Jarobi improvising lines frequently and rhyming back and forth with ease and freshness. Q-Tip and Phife even joked their way through exchanges that showed the long-existing cracks in their relationship.
After a lengthy monologue, Tip said, "We're not going to take too much talking time tonight." Phife immediately responded, "We're not going to take too much talking time? Then what was that?"
The pair and the crowd erupted in laughter, and Tip ripped back, "That's why we haven't done an album is so many years!... We cut up with each other because we don't give a f***--we got love for each other. We're just having fun."
A Tribe Called Quest
The group packed a total of 19 songs into the set, most of them featuring lyrics that are permanently etched in the minds of the 20- and 30-something audience members. The highlight of the night was an extended beatbox and vocal breakdown on the chorus for "Find a Way," and a freestyle session that took on George W. Bush and the less serious topic of chicken and orange juice, as yelled repeatedly by one member of the crowd throughout the night.
A three-song encore of "Scenario," the song that first put Tribe on the hip-hop map, "Check the Rhyme," and "Award Tour" closed out the night. It felt like a celebration of one of hip-hop's greatest groups, but with the added, lingering question of whether a hits-centric reunion tour will provide the spark to get the trio back in the studio to make another album.
***
The bill included two opening acts with wildly different results.
Chicago's Rhymefest showed why he is a rising star, mixing wit with wisdom for a set that cranked up the energy in the room substantially. But while he did so through potent lyrics and personality, the first group, the Procussions, suffered mightily from an overabundance of the latter.
The group had an excellent DJ and two serviceable emcees, but a third emcee, the Mohawk-sporting J. Medeiros, proved to be their downfall and seemed a better fit for a Mountain Dew commercial, bounding about the stage in between screams and spastic dance moves. Like a Hummer driver making up for shortcomings elsewhere, emcees that yell, scream, and jump all over the stage are often compensating for their lack of skills, as was the case here.
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