Shawn Taylor - A Tribe Called Quests Peoples Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm

Peoples Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm

Praise for the series:

It was only a matter of time before a clever publisher realized that there is an audience for whom Exile on Main Street or Electric Ladyland axe as significant and worthy of study as The Catcher in the Rye or Middkmarch. The series, which now comprises 29 titles with more in the works, is freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebrationThe New York Times Book Review

Ideal for the rock geek who thinks liner notes just arent enoughRolling Stone

One of the coolest publishing imprints on the planetBookslut

These are for the insane collectors out there who appreciate fantastic design, well-executed thinking, and things that make your house look cool. Each volume in this series takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. We love these. We are huge nerdsVice

A brilliant serieseach one a work of real loveNME (UK)

Passionate, obsessive, and smartNylon

Religious tracts for the rock n roll faithfulBoldtype

[A] consistently excellent seriesUncut (UK)

Wearent naive enough to think that were your only source for reading about music (but if we had our waywatch out). For those of you who really like to know everything there is to know about an album, youd do well to check out Continuums 33 1/3 series of books.Pitchfork

For reviews of individual titles in the series, please visit our website at www.continuumbooks.com and 33third.blogspot.com

Also available in this series:

Dusty in Memphis by Warren Zanes

Forever Changes by Andrew Hultkrans

Harvest by Sam Inglis

The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society by Andy Miller

Meat Is Murder by Joe Pernice

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by John Cavanagh

Abba Gold by Elisabeth Vincentelli

Electric Ladyland by John Perry

Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott

Sign O the Times by Michaelangelo Matos

The Velvet Underground and Nico by Joe Harvard

Let It Be by Steve Matteo

Live at the Apollo by Douglas Wolk

Aqualung by Allan Moore

OK Computer by Dai Griffiths

Let It Be by Colin Meloy

Led Zeppelin IV by Erik Davis

Armed Forces by Franklin Bruno

Exile on Main Street by Bill Janovitz

Grace by Daphne Brooks

Murmur by J. Niimi

Pet Sounds by Jim Fusilli

Ramones by Nicholas Rombes

Endtroducing by Eliot Wilder

Kick Out the Jams by Don McLeese

Low by Hugo Wilcken

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Kim Cooper

Music from Big Pink by John Niven

Pauls Boutique by Dan LeRoy

Doolittle by Ben Sisario

Theres a Riot Goin On by Miles Marshall Lewis

Stone Roses by Alex Green

Bee Thousand by Marc Woodsworth

The Who Sell Out by John Dougan

Highway 61 Revisited by Mark Polizzotti

Loveless by Mike McGonigal

The Notorious Byrd Brothers by Ric Menck

Court and Spark by Sean Nelson

69 Love Songs by LD Beghtol

Songs in the Key of Life by Zeth Lundy

Use Your Illusion I and II by Eric Weisbard

Daydream Nation by Matthew Stearns

Trout Mask Replica by Kevin Courrier

Double Nickels on the Dime by Michael T. Fournier

Aja by Don Breithaupt

Forthcoming in this series:

Rid of Me by Kate Schatz

Lets Talk About Love by Carl Wilson

Pretty Hate Machine by Daphne Carr

and many more

Shawn Taylor

2007

The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc
80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038

The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX

www.continuumbooks.com

Copyright 2007 by Shawn Taylor

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers or their agents.

Printed in Canada

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Taylor, Shawn.
Peoples instinctive travels and the paths of rhythm / Shawn Taylor.
p. cm.
eISBN-13: 978-1-4411-1844-8
1. Tribe Called Quest (Musical group) Peoples instinctive travels and the paths of rhythm. I. Title.
ML421.T762T39 2007
782.4216490922--dc22
2007012543

Nostalgia sucks. It is like an elastic leash that tethers us to a particular moment in time. Things were much better then than they are today. The air was cleaner, the food tasted better, movies had more story and fewer special effects. And lets not forget the music

Ohmigod, the music was so much more authentic and the artists actually had talent. They made sacrifices for their art. Not like now, when anyone can use Reason, Battery, Garage Band and Digital Performer software to assault our eardrums with lame journal entries and shitty poetry set to substandard melodies. Yes, music was better back in the day. This isnt to say that there is no good music now, butespecially with hip-hopthere was more variety, and that variety was of a much higher caliber than most of the stuff that currently passes for hip-hop.

And nostalgia comes with its own context, its own myriad associations. As I sit here embarking on my journey to illuminate A Tribe Called Quests (from here on out the group will either be referred to as ATCQ or Tribe) Peoples Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, I find myself reliving the situations under which I was first exposed to the group. Even though this is one of my favorite albums of all time, my first exposure to Tribe brings up some bad memories.

My mother was the queen of the replacement fathers. Every five or six weeks, she would allow some new dude into our apartment and, for some odd reason, allow them to practice their hooks and jabs on us. I had no idea there were that many boxers in Brooklyn, let alone that my mother knew them all and allowed us to become an essential component of their training regimen. There was one particular beating that still causes the goose pimples to erupt. And, if Im in an emotionally sensitive or stressed state, the memory conquers my entire being and all I can do is ride the memory out. Im one of those peoplelike you, probablywho can create a musical index of my life; marrying each memory to a song. Given the time and the drive, I could create an autobiographical playlist of my life.

Music is a virus. We become infected. It permeates every aspect of our existence. We inadvertently mouth along with the words, tap our feet and bop our heads; music is a puppet master and we cannot help but do its bidding.