The official trailer for “Beats, Rhymes & Life”, Michael Rapaport’s documentary of A Tribe Called Quest, has just been released! The movie’s official poster and release dates have also been unveiled.
I seriously cannot articulate how pumped I am for this film.
As a die-hard Tribe fan, reading this update from MetalLungies definitely got me pumped: KevinNottingham.com is putting together an ATCQ mixtape, featuring a certain DJ Chong Wizard. And last week, they released one of the tape’s tracks, a remix of “Check the Rhyme” (from which this site derives its name), featuring Jermiside, A Brother Named George, Von Pea, Don Will, Ilyas and Elucid. The track is illll, and hopefully a good indication of what the rest of the mixtape will sound like. Check it:
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Man alive, I feel like we’ve wished a rest-in-peace on so many people this year. But still, Freddie Hubbard deserves special recognition. He was one of the best jazz musicians of all time.
In fact, “Red Clay”, perhaps his most famous song, was even dearer to my heart because of the sample used in the A Tribe Called Quest Song “Sucka Nigga”.
He was one of the greatest, and most underrated musicians of our age and I think we should all pay some tribute to him.
Keep your eyes peeled, I think we’ll have some good stuff up soon in honour of him.
Yeah, it’s a terrible pun. Which is unfortunate considering how dope Paul Dateh and his unique take on hip-hop are. A classically trained violinist, Dateh attended Los Angeles’ Thornton School of Music where he was introduced to improvisational jazz and eventually hip-hop. Check out the video to see his unique, but undeniably ill, take on a number of hip-hop classics by Tribe, J5 and Ghostface.
Courtesy of Soul Bounce.
Well, it’s never fun to say I told you so, but it looks like Guerilla Union‘s decision to move the Vancouver stop of this year’s Rock The Bells tour to the middle of now… er, the Gorge Amphitheatre, has backfired. According to this article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the concert suffered from “poor turnout,” a “delayed start” and a few “forgettable acts” (including Jedi Mind Tricks and, suprisingly, Mos Def).
The article’s author attributes the poor attendance on concert fatigue, noting that “this summer [the Gorge] has already seen a number of stellar festivals including Sub Pop’s 20th anniversary, the Capitol Hill Block Party, Sasquatch! and others.”
To be honest, while I’m still bitter about Guerilla Union’s decision to change the venue of this leg of the tour, it’s definitely not cool that turnout was low. If anything, my hope was that the response would be overwhelming, and that Tribe would be convinced to return to the Northwest at a time and place I could actually attend.
Ah well, at least the people who did show up were, aside from the aforementioned exceptions, treated to a good show. As the Seattle PI article puts it, “good music prevailed and made Rock The Bells a great way to ring out the Gorge’s season.”
Image yanked from: http://flickr.com/photos/15431728@N00/2713822454
A few days ago I mentioned that seeing A Tribe Called Quest perform live would be, without a doubt, the single greatest musical experience of my life. Now, it appears as though all my wildest dreams are coming true: yesterday afternoon it was announced that A Tribe Called Quest would be re-uniting to headline this year’s Rock The Bells tour which will be making a stop in Vancouver on August 20!
But it gets even better. In addition to the Tribe reunion the tour will also see legendary ’90s collective The Pharcyde perform together for the first time in several years. Other artists slated to perform include Nas, Mos Def, De La Soul, Rakim, Method Man & Redman, Raekwon, Ghostface and Dead Prez. As you can imagine, I’ve passed out from sheer excitement twice already.
For more information, including the full concert line-up and tour dates, visit the official Rock The Bells site here.
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