Midnight Marauders

Classic! In this case we loot for ears... Uh? Do you really need to read a review about any TCQ album. If you don't know by now,...you'll never know. I bought this to replace the cassette tape version I used to rock back in the day when I was a teenager.

One of the best hip hop albums of ALL TIME. Smooth beats and catchy yet clever rhymes.

What group in history can claim to put out 3 straight 5 star classics? Tribe called quest. Midnight was yet another great album from arguably one of the best groups in Hip Hop History. I wish many kids today could live in in the early 90's because this was the golden age of HIP HOP. This album was one of many that was golden.

and you had your choices (Hip Hop/Rap Music wise) between Rakim's Follow The Leader, KRS (Boogie Down Production) Criminal Minded, Big Daddy Kane's Long Live the Kane, NWA's Straight Outta Compton, Dre and Snoop's The Chronic, and a Tribe Called Quest's Midnight Marauder, which one would you seriously pick???

Well this almost happened to me literally- but figuratively speaking. My Junior year of high school my family moved from Jamaica Queens- home to ATCQ and moved me to the middle of west-bubblefuc-coondocks (where you have more racoons as neighbors than humans) woodland Virginia and I almost popped - like when Neo was pulled out of the matrix and wanted to go back at first.

It was a hard-time adjusting, but just when I moved- ATCQ came out with Midnight Marauders to save the day and my life. If it wasn't for my fellow Jamaica Queens Native tongue-Sons and this album to get me by until I at least graduated from high-school joined the military and escaped from the area- I might have went columbine at my school and on my parents. The most vivid memory even more clearer than the first time I lost my virginity was when I demanded that my mother drive me to the nearest mall out of the coondocks to get the Midnight Maurader album immediately when it dropped. As soon as the cash register printed the receipt I had the plastic wrapper off the casette tape case(yeah thats right - and your grandparents had 8-tracks -just ask them about that). I rush my mother to the car to get the tape in the crappy car's casette deck and pump the volume up as high as it would go. As soon as I heard Phife go "Linden Blvd. Represent, Represent" -thats all I needed- it was like taking a Bob Marley jumbo spliff to the head and entering Shri-La or Nirvana. I had climbed the seven steps to heaven and escaped from the cabin fever I was severely suffering from out in the coondocks of VA.

This album is one of the best MUSIC albums ever created and produced - period. How does that help you the Music Reviewer deciding whether or not to buy this album- I dont know- but confessing my passion for this album sure as hell helped me from going down the wrong route in life. This album served as my therapy like those sessions Tony Soprano used to get. Thank you ATCQ - you saved my life. Big Up & Nuff Respect!!!

1993, a year of classic hip hop albums, east and west coast were releasing grounbreaking ones. Native Tongues were in full effect and A Tribe Called Quest, with already two classics under their name brought out their third album - Midnight Marauders.

Beats: Mostly produced by Ali Shaheed Muhammad, the beats focus on jazz samples, from all types of older music like Kool And The Gang, and Weldon Irvine. Large Professor has a producer guest spot on 'Keep It Rollin,' without interrupting the flow between each track. The beats compliment Phife's and Q-Tip's smooth flow perfectly, and the DJ scratches from Shaheed are exceptional, complete genius. Heavy drums, horn samples, pianos, and tight basslines make the instrumentals a 10/10.

Rhymes: Q-Tip and Phife are one the greatest duo's in hip hop ever. Phife has so many classic hip hop quotes on this album, and Q-Tip shows his conscious style on 'Sucka Nigga,' a track about the use of the word nigga:

'Now the little shorties say it all of the time
And a whole bunch of niggas throw the word in they rhyme
Yo I start to flinch, as I try not to say it
But my lips is like the oowop as I start to spray it'

Tip, Phife, and Ali Shaheed create laidback, dark, upbeat, smooth, conscious tracks on this album, which are all brilliant tracks. It is not often when you love every track on an album, but Midnight Marauders is a perfect example.

This is alternative hip hop at its best, simply flawless.