A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

WHEN IT COMES TO RHYTHMS, QUEST IS YOUR SAVIOR: Perhaps the smoothest flowest rap act in history, A Tribe Called Quest is getting back together. I respect the hell out of influential rap acts like P.E. and Run DMC, but it's the jazz-inflected abstract Tribe that I still listen to more than any other. As they once put it, ATCQ featured "knowledge being dropped over beats" -- beats that were hard, beats that were funky, that could get you hooked like a crackhead junkie.

From "What?", off The Low End Theory:

What's Duke Ellington without that swing?
What's Alex Haley if it doesn't have Roots?
What's a weekend if you ain't knockin' boots?
What's a black nation, without black unity?
What is a child who doesn't know puberty?
What is my label when I exit boom status?
What's menage-a-trois, or, that is
What is sex when you have three people?
What are laws if they ain't fair and equal?
What's Clark Kent without a telephone booth?
What is a liquor if it ain't 80 proof?
What are the youth if they ain't rebellin'?
What's Ralph Cramden, if he ain't yellin'
at Ed Norton, what is coke snortin'?
What is position if there is no contortin'?
What is hip-hop if it doesn't have violence?
Chill for a minute, Doug E. Fresh said silence.