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

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Three Hip-Hop groups defined the way I interfaced with Hip-Hop as a kid: The Jungle Brothers, De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest. Their music was the soundtrack of my youth: beats and rhymes with a positive, life-affirming vibe. To me, these groups were giants living amidst point guards; years later, when I interviewed a number of them for my Hip-Hop documentary 5 Sides of a Coin, I felt like I'd grown up, being allowed to stand face-to-face with many of my childhood idols.

I still love Hip-Hop, but nostalgia has a way of tempering things. It's been nearly 20 years since I've had an epiphanic Hip-Hop moment; the last one I remember was hearing 36 Chambers or Illmatic for the first time. Don't get me wrong, I still bump my head to a lot of what's out there...it just doesn't move me the same way it used to.

A few weeks back I watched Michael Rapaport's Beats, Rhymes and Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest and I was instantly reminded of Hip-Hop's significance in my life. Rapaport's film isn't shot on the best cameras or filmed by the most competent operators, but it really doesn't matter. This film was made by a Tribe fan for Tribe fans and whether it succeeds as therapy or mediation between Tip and Phife is irrelevant. If --somehow-- this doc has anything to do with ATCQ fulfilling their contractual obligation to produce one more album, then it's a monumental success; if not, it's still a great way for die-hard Tribe fans to reconnect with one of Hip-Hop's greatest groups.

I never really thought about the name of the group, but of course if you do a documentary and have such a weird band name, that will be one of the things explored. While this was to be expected, seeing so many high profile musicians giving their insight on how Quest affected them or the music landscape overall, is quite interesting to say the least.

And all that by one of the whitest Dudes/actors on this planet. Michael Rappaport created this and he really did good. I would think through the friends he has, he had quite the connections to other artists. Nicely edited, with a coherent line to follow for anyone watching. This could have been an episode of the Netflix show that explores Hip Hop, but let's just see this as an added extra

I love ATCQ and we do get very exciting looks at the birth of hip hop as a creative force of nature. And the iconoclasts, in their attitude, how they dressed, the topics they addressed in their lyrics. We also have the painful moments of the more toxic by the day band dynamics that lead to the breakup until they get back together to release a brilliant swan song album in 2016.

I don't think the rift between the two band members is completely made clear in the documentary except it's about one of them feeling disrespected and egos and I think there was more there to unearth by a more skilled film maker. But Rapaport made this film with love.

I'm troubled that some reviewers object to the fact that this film doesn't ignore the considerable tensions that existed within A Tribe Called Quest.

This is a documentary, not a propaganda film... the backstage dynamics between the members of ATCQ over the years (both positive and negative) are highly relevant to the film, assuming that it wasn't meant as a puff piece.

If anything, Rapaport held back a bit MORE than he should have, which is part of the reason why I don't give the film an even higher rating, as I would (for example) to the brutally revealing documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.

Also, anyone who watches the film and doesn't get some sense of why the group meant so much to so many of us (in its artistry and in its spirit) just wasn't paying attention.

I do hope that the DVD extras spend more time on the extended Native Tongue Family... while it certainly isn't ignored in the film, the Native Tongue Family deserves at the very least its own mini- documentary.

"Beats, Rhymes, and Life" does a very good job of exploring A Tribe Called Quest's beginnings as well as it's influence, and is the type of music documentary that all others should look to when trying to tell an artist's story in a impactful and informative way, and it checks off all of the boxes that one should expect such a movie to go through, but it doesn't just cover the group as a whole- it covers all of the members personal lives in a good yet relevant way. The reason why it works better than many other films in this genre is that it covers the bands breakup and fallings out as those things are actually happening; not everything is current and not everything is in hindsight-it's a really healthy and good mix, and that's something I really admire it for. In addition to that, interviews from other musicians that've been impacted by the group's influence do a decent (albeit sometimes generic) job of informing the viewer on the impact the group has actually had. My biggest issue with this film is that it feels a little too long, and sometimes there are interviews that don't feel entirely necessary, and become a little boring and inflate the running time, when what I really want to see is more info from the actual members of the tribe. Overall, I really enjoyed this film and would easily recommend it. 7.4/10