Q-Tip and Phife Dawg, the two MCs of the group were childhood best friends, but always had a different view of their craft. For Tip it was always a serious job that demanded the most accurate attention. His passion has always laid in finding amazing music to sample on each track and knowing exactly how the layers of sounds would would perfectly together. For Phife (aka, the Funky Diabetic), he was always more interested in amazing rhymes and the more poetic aspects of the art. This always worked well for them, as they made six albums in about 12 years, including The Low End Theory, one of the best rap/hip hop albums of all time.
By the late 1990s, however, they were fighting more and more and seemed less interested in keeping the group together. They had already lost one of the original members, Jarobi, who seemed to be less into the touring thing than the others, and their DJ, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, seemed to not be interested in fighting the two titans he worked with. The band melted away, but they remained friendly. Sort of.
Phife was always upset that Tip became known as the "leader" of the band and didn't like how he would run things; Tip didn't like that Phife was never as serious about the work as he felt it necessary to be. When they got together for a reunion in 2008 at the Rock the Bells show (to help Phife pay for medical issues relating to his juvenile diabetes), they ended up fighting constantly and not speaking to one another by the end.
Rapaport talks to most of the important rappers whose styles either were influenced by Tribe or developed at the same time. Interviews include members of De La Soul, The Jungle Brothers, Monie Love, Prince Paul, Common, Questlove, Black Thought and Pharrell Williams, to say nothing of appearances by Mary J. Blige, Busta Rhymes and Mos Def. They all talk about how important Tribe's music was to them. Common has what is probably the most important comment that they all had access to the old vinyl that Tribe found their beats and samples from, but Tribe were the first guys to actually listen to those albums and use them.
Rapaport, as passionate as he clearly is about Tribe, is not a great documentarian and the film loses some power with a very sloppy style and inconsistent pace. There are some frustrating transitions and at least two albums (of the six they released) are barely discussed at all.
This is a good documentary from the point of view of telling a story of a band and getting a generally good understanding about their history. Unfortunately the issue of Phife and Tip not liking one another is not really dug into very deeply. Rapaport presents the fight they're having in it's basic terms, but doesn't really get deep into why they are fighting (unlike how Berlinger and Sinofsky handled a similar event in Some Kind of Monster). This is not a very deep movie, but it does have great music... which Rapaport can't take credit for, of course.
Stars: 2.5 of 4
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