Before Trinidad James we had Phife Dawg "Trini Gladiator" from the Tribe Called Quest RIP.

In the music business, when you disappear for a long stretch of time, you abandon your right to grouse about how things have changed in your absence. Nostalgia is a cheap crutch and a lame weapon. When the whole world is changing, though, disappearing and then re-emerging in different circumstances can be more deeply destabilizing. The things you held dear might be missing, or under attack. Adjusting is a full-time job.

Last week, the members of A Tribe Called Quest, one of the essential groups of the 1990s, came back after nearly two decades into a hip-hop world that had iterated a dozen or more times; they didn’t flinch. And they returned in a moment when America’s racial tensions were at an outrageous level; they stepped into action.

It’s been 18 years since A Tribe Called Quest released an album — enough time for eight years of George W. Bush and almost eight years of Barack Obama, for Lil Wayne and Kendrick Lamar, Sept. 11 and Black Lives Matter, Drake and Young Thug, the rise of streaming and the fall of the record store.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/arts/music/a-tribe-called-quest.h...

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odw November 16, 2016 at 1:12pm

In the music business, when you disappear for a long stretch of time, you abandon your right to grouse about how things have changed in your absence. Nostalgia is a cheap crutch and a lame weapon. When the whole world is changing, though, disappearing and then re-emerging in different circumstances can be more deeply destabilizing. The things you held dear might be missing, or under attack. Adjusting is a full-time job.

Last week, the members of A Tribe Called Quest, one of the essential groups of the 1990s, came back after nearly two decades into a hip-hop world that had iterated a dozen or more times; they didn’t flinch. And they returned in a moment when America’s racial tensions were at an outrageous level; they stepped into action.

It’s been 18 years since A Tribe Called Quest released an album — enough time for eight years of George W. Bush and almost eight years of Barack Obama, for Lil Wayne and Kendrick Lamar, Sept. 11 and Black Lives Matter, Drake and Young Thug, the rise of streaming and the fall of the record store.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/arts/music/a-tribe-called-quest.h...

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